Overview
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system has recently identified a significant flaw in the libxslt library with the designation CVE-2025-7424. This vulnerability is of critical importance due to the potential for system compromise or data leakage, affecting any application or system that uses the libxslt library to perform XML transformations. The flaw arises from a type confusion issue during XML transformations, which can lead to application crashes, memory corruption, and, in some cases, denial of service or unexpected behavior.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-7424
Severity: High (7.8 CVSS Score)
Attack Vector: Local network
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: No
Impact: System compromise, data leakage, denial of service, or unexpected behavior.
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
libxslt | All versions prior to patch
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability arises from the way the libxslt library handles memory during XML transformations. Specifically, it uses the same memory field, “psvi”, for both the stylesheet and input data. This can cause type confusion, which can lead to memory corruption or a crash of the application using the library. If an attacker can send maliciously crafted data to the system, they can exploit this flaw to cause denial of service or, in some cases, even gain unauthorized access to the system.
Conceptual Example Code
Here’s a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited using a malicious XML payload:
POST /processxml HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:value-of select="exploit('psvi')"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>In this example, the attacker is sending a malicious XML payload designed to exploit the “psvi” memory field, potentially causing the application to crash, corrupting memory, or even allowing the attacker to gain unauthorized access to the system.
