CVE-2018-9251 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2018-9251?

CVE-2018-9251 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 4 Apr 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

The xz_decomp function in xzlib.c in libxml2 2.9.8, if --with-lzma is used, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) via a crafted XML file that triggers LZMA_MEMLIMIT_ERROR, as demonstrated by xmllint, a different vulnerability than CVE-2015-8035.

Weakness: CWE-835

Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-9251?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Xmlsoft Libxml2.

How do I fix CVE-2018-9251?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2018-9251 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-9251 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as ALPINE-CVE-2018-9251, ECHO-6e4b-0817-e013, GHSA-qvh5-3xv2-rf6p.