libxslt: Execution of arbitrary code

Background

libxslt is the XSLT C library developed for the GNOME project. XSLT is an XML language to define transformations for XML.

Description

Chris Evans (Google Security) reported that the libexslt library that is part of libxslt is affected by a heap-based buffer overflow in the RC4 encryption/decryption functions.

Impact

A remote attacker could entice a user to process an XML file using a specially crafted XSLT stylesheet in an application linked against libxslt, possibly leading to the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the application.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All libxslt users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-libs/libxslt-1.1.24-r1"