Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2025-7425: GNOME libxslt heap use-after-free in attribute management

CVE-2025-7425 · Severity: high · CVSS 7.8 · Published 2025-07-10

Technologies: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Gnome Libxslt. Vendors: Red Hat, Gnome.

Executive brief

A memory management flaw was found in libxslt, a library used by many applications to process XML data. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause a system crash or potentially execute unauthorized actions by corrupting the system's memory. This could lead to service outages or a compromise of system integrity in environments that process untrusted XML documents.

Technical details

A use-after-free vulnerability exists in libxslt due to improper modification of attribute type, atype, and flags within the xmlAttrPtr structure. When XSLT functions (such as the key() process) generate tree fragments, this corruption prevents the correct cleanup of ID attributes. Consequently, the library may attempt to access memory that has already been freed, leading to a crash or allowing an attacker to trigger heap corruption. The vulnerability is typically reachable when the library processes specially crafted XSLT stylesheets or XML input. Patches have been released by GNOME and various Linux distributions including Red Hat and Debian.

Affected products

  • GNOME libxslt < 1.1.39-8.el10_0
  • GNOME libxml2 < 2.15.2
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 < 2.9.1-6.el7_9.12
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Affected
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 < 2.9.13-11.el9_6
  • Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 < 2.12.5-8.el10_0

Timeline

  • 2025-07-10: disclosed: CVE published date
  • 2025-07-31: patched: Red Hat released security updates (RHSA-2025:12447)

References

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