Amazon Linux AMI : expat (ALAS-2021-1459)

high Nessus Plugin ID 144990

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Synopsis

The remote Amazon Linux AMI host is missing a security update.

Description

The version of expat installed on the remote host is prior to 2.1.0-12.24. It is, therefore, affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the ALAS-2021-1459 advisory.

It was discovered that the setElementTypePrefix() function incorrectly extracted XML namespace prefixes.
By tricking an application into processing a specially crafted XML file, an attacker could cause unusually high consumption of memory resources and possibly lead to a denial of service. (CVE-2018-20843)

In libexpat before 2.2.8, crafted XML input could fool the parser into changing from DTD parsing to document parsing too early; a consecutive call to XML_GetCurrentLineNumber (or XML_GetCurrentColumnNumber) then resulted in a heap-based buffer over-read. (CVE-2019-15903)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the tested product security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Run 'yum update expat' to update your system.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 144990

File Name: ala_ALAS-2021-1459.nasl

Version: 1.6

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Amazon Linux Local Security Checks

Published: 1/14/2021

Updated: 12/11/2024

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 6.1

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2018-20843

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.7

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2019-15903

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:expat-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:expat-devel, cpe:/o:amazon:linux, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:expat

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/AmazonLinux/release, Host/AmazonLinux/rpm-list

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 1/12/2021

Vulnerability Publication Date: 6/24/2019

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2018-20843, CVE-2019-15903

ALAS: 2021-1459

Detections

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