Skip to main content
Live Webinar with SANS (June 25)— Agentic CTI Automation for Fun & ProfitRegister Free
Mallory
HighPublic exploit

Denial of Service in Expat libexpat via excessive memory allocation

IdentifiersCVE-2025-59375CWE-770· Allocation of Resources Without…

CVE-2025-59375 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in libexpat, the XML parsing library in Expat, affecting versions prior to 2.7.2. A specially crafted small XML document can drive the parser into disproportionately large dynamic memory allocations during parsing. The issue is described as forced extensive use of dynamic memory despite small parser input, indicating insufficient limits or throttling on resource allocation in affected parsing code paths. This can cause the consuming process to allocate far more heap memory than expected while handling attacker-controlled XML input.

Share:
For your environment

Are you exposed to this one?

Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.

ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation can exhaust available memory in the target process and potentially the host, resulting in denial of service, degraded performance, process termination, or service instability. The practical impact is highest in applications or services that parse untrusted XML input using vulnerable libexpat builds. Because libexpat is widely embedded in operating systems and third-party products, downstream consumers may also be affected.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Until patches are applied, avoid parsing untrusted or unauthenticated XML input with vulnerable libexpat instances where possible. Enforce strict resource controls around XML-processing services, including process memory limits, request size limits, parser input validation, timeouts, and service isolation to reduce blast radius. Restrict exposure of XML-processing interfaces to trusted sources where operationally feasible.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade libexpat/Expat to version 2.7.2 or later, which fixes CVE-2025-59375. For products that bundle or statically link libexpat, apply the vendor-provided update that incorporates Expat 2.7.2 or an equivalent backported fix. Verify transitive dependencies as many affected products consume libexpat indirectly.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
Libexpat ProjectLibexpatapplication
PythonPythonapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.

Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures1

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity28

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.

Denial of Service in Expat libexpat via excessive memory allocation (CVE-2025-59375) | Mallory