VulnerabilityPublished 26 Dec 2025

CVE-2025-25341: libxmljs · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects libxmljsSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 17:16 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 36% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 26 Dec 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
npmlibxmljs`pkg:npm/libxmljs`Other threats	Affected =1.0.11	Fixed in–

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-25341, organizations should first identify all instances where libxmljs 1.0.11 is used, particularly in services exposed to external or untrusted XML inputs. Immediate mitigation includes implementing strict input validation to reject suspicious or malformed XML documents before parsing. Employing XML schema validation can reduce the risk of processing malicious entities. Where possible, sandboxing or isolating XML parsing components can limit the impact of crashes. Monitoring application logs for segmentation faults or crashes related to XML processing can provide early detection of exploitation attempts. Organizations should track vendor advisories for patches or updates to libxmljs and plan prompt upgrades once fixes are released. In the interim, consider replacing libxmljs with alternative, more secure XML parsing libraries that have robust handling of entity references. Network-level protections such as Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) can be configured to detect and block suspicious XML payloads. Finally, ensure robust incident response plans are in place to quickly restore services if a DoS attack occurs.

Description

A vulnerability exists in the libxmljs 1.0.11 when parsing a specially crafted XML document. Accessing the internal _ref property on entity_ref and entity_decl nodes causes a segmentation fault, potentially leading to a denial-of-service (DoS).

Impact

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2025-25341 is the potential for denial-of-service attacks against services relying on libxmljs 1.0.11 for XML parsing. This can disrupt critical business operations, especially for industries dependent on XML-based communication protocols, such as finance, telecommunications, and government services. The vulnerability could be exploited to crash web servers, APIs, or middleware components, leading to service outages and degraded availability. In sectors where uptime and reliability are paramount, such as healthcare and public infrastructure, such disruptions could have cascading effects. Additionally, repeated exploitation attempts could increase operational costs due to incident response and recovery efforts. The vulnerability does not appear to compromise confidentiality or integrity directly but poses a significant threat to service continuity. Organizations with automated XML processing pipelines or those exposing XML parsing functionality to external inputs are at heightened risk.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

github.com/libxmljs/libxmljs/issues/667 (opens in a new tab)

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 26 Dec 2025, 15:25 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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