# CVE-2013-1864: Denial of service in n/a

> Remote attackers can cause denial of service via memory and CPU exhaustion using a crafted PXML document with nested entity references.

- **Severity:** Medium 4.3 (`AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 23 May 2014
- **Updated:** 6 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-4hmc-wjwv-5gj5

## What is CVE-2013-1864?

CVE-2013-1864 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Suse Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop, published on 23 May 2014. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

The Portable Tool Library (aka PTLib) before 2.10.10, as used in Ekiga before 4.0.1, does not properly detect recursion during entity expansion, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory and CPU consumption) via a crafted PXML document containing a large number of nested entity references, aka a "billion laughs attack."

Weakness: CWE-119 (Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2013-1864?

It affects 4 products.


Products: Ekiga Ekiga, Opalvoip Portable Tool Library, Suse Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop, Suse Suse Linux Enterprise Software Development Kit.

## How do I fix CVE-2013-1864?

No fix has been published for CVE-2013-1864 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2013-1864 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2013-1864 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Suse Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop

- [CVE-2007-1006](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2007-1006/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2007-1007](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2007-1007/): Other in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2011-1830](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2011-1830/): Ekiga attempts to dlopen /tmp/ekiga_test.so (medium 5.7)
- [CVE-2012-5621](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2012-5621/): Denial of service in n/a (medium 5.0)
- [CVE-2007-4924](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2007-4924/): Denial of service in n/a (medium 5.0)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2013-1864 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2013-1864 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Suse Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop, published on 23 May 2014. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2013-1864 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Suse Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-1864/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-1864/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2013-1864
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2013-1864
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2013-1864

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-1864/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.