Vulnerability · Published Feb 2, 2026 · Assigned by redhat
CVE-2026-1757Libxml2: memory leak leading to local denial of service in xmllint interactive shell
Medium 6.2
In plain English
A medium-severity memory leak in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 from Red Hat. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 12% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
A flaw was identified in the interactive shell of the xmllint utility, part of the libxml2 project, where memory allocated for user input is not properly released under certain conditions. When a user submits input consisting only of whitespace, the program skips command execution but fails to free the allocated buffer. Repeating this action causes memory to continuously accumulate. Over time, this can exhaust system memory and terminate the xmllint process, creating a denial-of-service condition on the local system.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:12 | libxml2 | 2.9.14+dfsg-1.3~deb12u6 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-1757 |
| Debian:13 | libxml2 | 2.12.7+dfsg+really2.9.14-2.1+deb13u3 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-1757 |
| Debian:14 | libxml2 | 2.15.2+dfsg-0.1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-1757 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | libxml2 | 2.14.5+dfsg-0.2ubuntu0.2 | USN-8460-1 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | libxml2 | 2.14.5+dfsg-0.2ubuntu0.2 | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-1757 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | libxml2 | 2.15.2+dfsg-0.1ubuntu0.1 | USN-8460-1 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat | Red Hat Hardened Images | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat JBoss Core Services | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | see references |
| Red Hat | Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 | see references |
Weakness: CWE-401 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
References
- RHSA-2026:7519 vendor-advisory, x_refsource_REDHAT
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-1757 vdb-entry, x_refsource_REDHAT
- RHBZ#2435940 issue-tracking, x_refsource_REDHAT
- https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/issues/1009