GHSA-jxjr-5h69-qw3w CVE-2015-7499

Heap-based buffer overflow in nokogiri

Medium RubyGems

Severity: Medium; The publisher's own rating, not a CVSS score
Exploit chance (EPSS): 6.41%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 93.69% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer
Fix: 1.6.7.2; Upgrade nokogiri to this version or later

Description

Heap-based buffer overflow in the xmlGROW function in parser.c in libxml2 before 2.9.3. A remote attacker could provide a specially crafted XML or HTML file that, when processed by an application using libxml2, would cause that application to use an excessive amount of CPU, leak potentially sensitive information, or crash the application.

Affected versions

RubyGems

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
nokogiri	`>= 1.6.0, < 1.6.7.2`	`1.6.7.2`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

nokogiri RubyGems → `1.6.7.2`

bundler

bundle update nokogiri # Gemfile: gem "nokogiri", ">= 1.6.7.2"

Weakness

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

The product performs operations on a memory buffer, but it reads from or writes to a memory location outside the buffer's intended boundary. This may result in read or write operations on unexpected memory locations that could be linked to other variables, data structures, or internal program data.

How to prevent it

Requirements: Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. For example, many languages that perform their own memory management, such as Java and Perl, are not subject to buffer overflows. Other languages, such as Ada and C#, typically provide overflow protection, but the protection can be disabled by the programmer. Be wary that a language's interface to native code may still be subject to overflows, even if the language itself is theoretically safe.
Architecture and Design: Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. Examples include the Safe C String Library (SafeStr) by Messier and Viega [REF-57], and the Strsafe.h library from Microsoft [REF-56]. These libraries provide safer versions of overflow-prone string-handling functions.
Operation, Build and Compilation: Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index checking. D3-SFCV (Stack Frame Canary Validation) from D3FEND [REF-1334] discusses canary-based detection in detail.
Implementation: Consider adhering to the following rules when allocating and managing an application's memory: Double check that the buffer is as large as specified. When using functions that accept a number of bytes to copy, such as strncpy(), be aware that if the destination buffer size is equal to the source buffer size, it may not NULL-terminate the string. Check buffer boundaries if accessing the buffer in a loop and make sure there is no danger of writing past the allocated space. If necessary, truncate all input strings to a reasonable length before passing them to the copy and concatenation functions.
Operation, Build and Compilation: Run or compile the software using features or extensions that randomly arrange the positions of a program's executable and libraries in memory. Because this makes the addresses unpredictable, it can prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to exploitable code. Examples include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) [REF-58] [REF-60] and Position-Independent Executables (PIE) [REF-64]. Imported modules may be similarly realigned if their default memory addresses conflict with other modules, in a process known as "rebasing" (for Windows) and "prelinking" (for Linux) [REF-1332] using randomly generated addresses. ASLR for libraries cannot be used in conjunction with prelink since it would require relocating the libraries at run-time, defeating the whole purpose of prelinking. For more information on these techniques see D3-SAOR (Segment Address Offset Randomization) from D3FEND [REF-1335].
Operation: Use a CPU and operating system that offers Data Execution Protection (using hardware NX or XD bits) or the equivalent techniques that simulate this feature in software, such as PaX [REF-60] [REF-61]. These techniques ensure that any instruction executed is exclusively at a memory address that is part of the code segment. For more information on these techniques see D3-PSEP (Process Segment Execution Prevention) from D3FEND [REF-1336].
Implementation: Replace unbounded copy functions with analogous functions that support length arguments, such as strcpy with strncpy. Create these if they are not available.

References

Advisories

Timeline

Sep 17, 2018 Published
Dec 8, 2024 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-phwj-rprq-35pp Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when setting an attribute value via `Nokogiri::XML::Attr#value=` or `#content=`	High	Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-wfpw-mmfh-qq69 Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free in XInclude Processing	Low	Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-p67v-3w7g-wjg7 Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when directly using `NokogirI::XML::XPathContext` beyond document lifetime	Medium	Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-wjv4-x9w8-wm3h Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when setting `Document#root=` to an invalid node type	Medium	Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-5prr-v3j2-97mh Nokogiri: Possible Out-of-Bounds Read in `Nokogiri::XML::NodeSet#[]`	High	Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-9cv2-cfxc-v4v2 Nokogiri: Null Pointer Dereference calling methods on uninitialized wrapper classes	High	Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-8678-w3jw-xfc2 Nokogiri: XML::Schema on JRuby allows network requests when NONET is set, bypassing CVE-2020-26247	Low	Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-5v8h-3h3q-446p Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when `Nokogiri::XML::Document#encoding=` raises an exception	High	Also affects nokogiri

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