CVE-2021-42260 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2021-42260?

CVE-2021-42260 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 11 Oct 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

TinyXML through 2.6.2 has an infinite loop in TiXmlParsingData::Stamp in tinyxmlparser.cpp via the TIXML_UTF_LEAD_0 case. It can be triggered by a crafted XML message and leads to a denial of service.

Weakness: CWE-835

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-42260?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Tinyxml Project Tinyxml.

How do I fix CVE-2021-42260?

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-2021-42260 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-42260 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Public exploit code: 1 proofs of concept on GitHub.

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 DEBIAN-CVE-2021-42260, DLA-2988-1, DLA-3130-1, GHSA-x43j-m68c-2qxf, MGASA-2021-0514, OESA-2022-1521 and 4 more.