Service stall via quadratic malformed-XML recovery
Published Sep 1, 2026 · Updated Sep 1, 2026
Quadratic-time processing in affected xmldom releases allows remote attackers to stall Node.js services via crafted XML. parseElementStartPart repeatedly rescans malformed tag names during single-character recovery, while normalize() repeatedly reindexes and rebuilds adjacent text nodes. Exploitation requires untrusted XML to reach default parsing, or attacker-influenced adjacent text nodes to reach normalize(), and interrupts the event loop without reported data exposure or modification.
Summary
What happened
Quadratic-time processing in affected xmldom releases allows remote attackers to stall Node.js services via crafted XML. parseElementStartPart repeatedly rescans malformed tag names during single-character recovery, while normalize() repeatedly reindexes and rebuilds adjacent text nodes. Exploitation requires untrusted XML to reach default parsing, or attacker-influenced adjacent text nodes to reach normalize(), and interrupts the event loop without reported data exposure or modification.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-83614
- Published
- Sep 1, 2026
- Updated
- Sep 1, 2026
- Vendor
- xmldom
- Product
- xmldom
- Classifications
- CWE-407, CWE-400, T1499
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 1, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Sep 1, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=>= 0.3.0, <= 0.6.0
- Affected versionversion=>= 0.7.0, < 0.8.15
- Affected versionversion=>= 0.9.0, < 0.9.12
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- Upstream malformed-XML proof of conceptproof of concept · demonstrated
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
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