[xml] Research about vulnerabilities

[Raphael de Carvalho Muniz <raphael copin ufcg edu br>]

 Dear libxml2 owners,

I am performing research about weaknesses in C open source programs. As part of my research, I am studying weaknesses that may be vulnerabilities in the Libxml2 project.

I found in the commit history of Libxml2 (commit 9acef28) the presence of the following code snippet in the libxml.c file (Lines 1,597 - 1,612). I believe that this commit presents a weakness that, If format strings can be influenced by an attacker, they can be exploited. This weakness is characterized by CWE Project as CWE-134: Use of Externally-Controlled Format String. When an attacker can modify an externally-controlled format string, this can lead to buffer overflows, denial of service, or data representation problems.

Moreover, I performed a software testing strategy with respect to confirm the vulnerability. We provide as input to the char *msg the value "%xtest" and the function libxml_buildMessage return the value"fc0c748ex", exposing a memory position.

This is the GitHub link to the commit:

https://github.com/GNOME/libxml2/commit/9acef289285008f81b4b66b4880baf600773cf67

Code snippet: 

static char *
libxml_buildMessage(const char *msg, va_list ap){
  int chars;
  char *str;

  str = (char *) xmlMalloc(1000);
  if (str == NULL)
    return NULL;

  chars = vsnprintf(str, 999, msg, ap);
  if (chars >= 998)
    str[999] = 0;
  

  return str;
}

Looking at this code snippet, I am wondering if you could answer the following brief questions:
We understand that this code has a weakness. Do you agree?
How do you detect weaknesses? Do you use any tool to detect them?
We would be very grateful if you say to us if you agree, and if you are going to fix it.

--

Raphael de Carvalho Muniz, M.Sc.

Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/1454914002384966
e-Mail: raphaeldecm gmail com / raphael copin ufcg edu br

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