Denial of Service due to use-after-free when replacing XML attribute values

Summary

Nokogiri is an open source XML and HTML library for the Ruby programming language. Prior to 1.19.4, Nokogiri’s CRuby native extension could leave a Ruby wrapper pointing to freed memory when replacing the value of an XML attribute. If Ruby code had already accessed an attribute child node, Nokogiri::XML::Attr#value= could free the underlying native child node while the wrapper remained reachable through the document node cache. A later use of the freed child node or a Ruby GC mark could dereference an invalid pointer, causing an invalid read and a possible segfault. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.19.4. The Nokogiri maintainers have evaluated this as low severity. Reaching it requires an unusual API-usage pattern that does not arise during normal use. The application must directly access an attribute's child node and then replace that same attribute's value via Attr#value= or #content=. Nokogiri 1.19.4 makes this pattern safe with no change to the public API. Red Hat severity: Low — CVSS 3.7 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L). Weakness: CWE-825. Affected Red Hat products: Red Hat 3scale API Management Platform 2; Red Hat Satellite 6. Red Hat does not currently list a fixing RHSA for this CVE.