CVE-2013-0339: Canonical Ubuntu Linux

Medium severity, CVSS 6.8. EPSS: 3.6% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

libxml2 through 2.9.1 does not properly handle external entities expansion unless an application developer uses the xmlSAX2ResolveEntity or xmlSetExternalEntityLoader function, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (resource consumption), send HTTP requests to intranet servers, or read arbitrary files via a crafted XML document, aka an XML External Entity (XXE) issue. NOTE: it could be argued that because libxml2 already provides the ability to disable external entity expansion, the responsibility for resolving this issue lies with application developers; according to this argument, this entry should be REJECTed and each affected application would need its own CVE.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: version 10.04 only; version 12.04 only; version 12.10 only; version 13.04 only
• Debian Debian Linux: version 6.0 only; version 7.0 only
• Suse Linux Enterprise Server: version 10 only
• Xmlsoft LIBXML2: up to and including 2.9.1; version 1.7.0 only; version 1.7.1 only; version 1.7.2 only; version 1.7.3 only; version 1.7.4 only; …

Published 2014-01-21. Last modified 2026-06-16.