CVE-2016-4472

high

Published 2016-06-30 · Modified 2026-05-06

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CVSS v3

8.1

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

8.1

Description

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.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

88%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
sles		affected
debian	bookworm	fixed	`2.1.1-2`
debian	bullseye	fixed	`2.1.1-2`
debian	forky	fixed	`2.1.1-2`
debian	sid	fixed	`2.1.1-2`
debian	trixie	fixed	`2.1.1-2`
ubuntu	12.04	affected

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
libexpat_project	libexpat	`{"endIncluding":"2.1.1"}`
mcafee	policy_auditor	`{"endExcluding":"6.5.1"}`	`6.5.1`
python	python	`{"startIncluding":"2.7.0","endExcluding":"2.7.15"}`	`2.7.15`

References

CWEs

CWE-119

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.