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Fencer Vulns
high 8.1

CVE-2016-4472 in the critical feed json

The overflow protection in Expat is removed by compilers with certain optimization settings, which allows remote attackers to cause a denia…

published 2016-06-30 10 y ago modified 2026-10-08 31 d ago also EUVD-2016-5459

cvss
8.1
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
11.9%
EPSS 11.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 96%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The overflow protection in Expat is removed by compilers with certain optimization settings, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via crafted XML data. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2015-1283 and CVE-2015-2716.

Patch / fix

  • mcafee policy_auditor 6.5.1
  • python python 2.7.15, 3.3.7, 3.4.7, 3.5.4, 3.6.2
  • expat Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.1.1-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-4472

  • libxmltok Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 1.2-3ubuntu0.16.04.1~esm2
  • libxmltok Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 1.2-4ubuntu0.18.04.1~esm4
  • libxmltok Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS 1.2-4ubuntu0.20.04.1~esm4
  • libxmltok Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS 1.2-4ubuntu0.22.04.1~esm4
  • libxmltok Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS 1.2-4.1ubuntu2.24.0.4.1+esm2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2016-4472

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • python3 SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES for SAP 12 SP4, SLES for SAP 12 SP3 +18 more 3.4.10-25.39.3
  • python3-base SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES for SAP 12 SP4, SLES for SAP 12 SP3 +18 more 3.4.10-25.39.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2020:0497-1

  • expat openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.2.0-3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10077-1

  • expat Alpine 3.4 2.1.1-r2

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2016-4472

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2016-4472 updated cvss 5.1

expat: Undefined behavior and pointer overflows

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 expat, firefox, xmlrpc-c, xulrunner, thunderbird
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 firefox, xulrunner, thunderbird, compat-expat1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 expat, firefox, xulrunner, thunderbird
    affected: no fix available, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Directory Server 8 expat
    under investigation
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 httpd, PyXML, dasher, apr-util, ghostscript Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 httpd, PyXML, mendexk, mod_ssl, texlive, apr-util, +18 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 apr-util, apr-util-nss, apr-util-ldap, apr-util-odbc, apr-util-mysql, apr-util-pgsql, +2 more Red Hat JBoss Core Services expat Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 expat Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Web Server 2 expat
    +1 more products
    Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Web Server 3 expat
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
total
Assessed
31 d ago

Exploit prediction

11.95% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 96% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.