CVE-2024-55549

A flaw was found in libxslt. This vulnerability allows an attacker to trigger a use-after-free issue by excluding result prefixes.

This use-after-free vulnerability in libxslt marked as Important rather than a Moderate flaw, due to its potential to enable arbitrary code execution or cause denial-of-service conditions. The vulnerability arises from mishandled memory in the exclPrefixTab table, which references freed namespace URLs during stylesheet processing. When an included stylesheet has xsl:text as the root and is deleted, the associated namespace URLs remain referenced in exclPrefixTab despite being freed, leading to a classic use-after-free condition. Since libxslt is a core XML transformation library frequently used in complex server-side applications (e.g., web frameworks, document rendering), an attacker can craft malicious XSLT stylesheets to exploit this flaw, potentially gaining remote code execution within the application's process.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.