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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2015-6838 json

The xsl_ext_function_php function in ext/xsl/xsltprocessor.c in PHP before 5.4.45, 5.5.x before 5.5.29, and 5.6.x before 5.6.13, when libxm…

published 10y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2015-6774

cvss
7.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
8.1%
EPSS 8.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 94%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The xsl_ext_function_php function in ext/xsl/xsltprocessor.c in PHP before 5.4.45, 5.5.x before 5.5.29, and 5.6.x before 5.6.13, when libxml2 before 2.9.2 is used, does not consider the possibility of a NULL valuePop return value before proceeding with a free operation after the principal argument loop, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and application crash) via a crafted XML document, a different vulnerability than CVE-2015-6837.

Patch / fix

  • php5 Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 5.5.9+dfsg-1ubuntu4.13

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2015-6838

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • rh-php56-php RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 5.6.5-8.el6
  • rh-php56-php RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 5.6.5-8.el7
  • rh-php56-php-gd RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 5.6.5-8.el6
  • rh-php56-php-gd RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 5.6.5-8.el7
  • rh-php56-php-cli RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 5.6.5-8.el6
  • rh-php56-php-cli RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 5.6.5-8.el7
  • rh-php56-php-dba RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 5.6.5-8.el6
  • rh-php56-php-dba RHEL 2 SOFTWARE_COLLECTIONS 5.6.5-8.el7

red hat advisories RHSA-2016:0457

  • php53 SLES for SAP 11 SP4, SLES for SAP 11 SP3, SLES 11 SP4 +4 more 5.3.17-48.1
  • php5 SLE Software Development Kit 12, SLE Module for Web and Scripting 12 5.5.14-36.1
  • php53 SLES 11 SP2-LTSS 5.3.17-47.1
  • php5 SLES 11 SP2-LTSS 5.2.14-0.7.30.72.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:1638-1SUSE-SU-2015:1818-1SUSE-SU-2015:1701-1SUSE-SU-2015:1633-1

Is CVE-2015-6838 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2015-6838 updated cvss 2.6

php: NULL pointer dereference in XSLTProcessor class

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 php, php53 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 php, php-gd, php-cli, php-dba, php-fpm, php-pdo, +20 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 php, php-gd, php-cli, php-dba, php-fpm, php-pdo, +18 more Red Hat Software Collections php54-php, php55-php, php54-php-gd, php55-php-gd, php54-php-cli, php54-php-dba, +44 more
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) rh-php56-php 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-gd 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-cli 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-dba 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-dbg 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-fpm 5.6.5-8.el6, +22 more Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) rh-php56-php 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-gd 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-cli 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-dba 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-dbg 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-fpm 5.6.5-8.el7, +20 more Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 6.6) rh-php56-php 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-gd 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-cli 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-dba 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-dbg 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-fpm 5.6.5-8.el6, +22 more Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 6.7) rh-php56-php 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-gd 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-cli 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-dba 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-dbg 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-fpm 5.6.5-8.el6, +22 more Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 7.1) rh-php56-php 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-gd 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-cli 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-dba 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-dbg 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-fpm 5.6.5-8.el7, +20 more Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server EUS (v. 7.2) rh-php56-php 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-gd 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-cli 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-dba 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-dbg 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-fpm 5.6.5-8.el7, +20 more
    +2 more products
    Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) rh-php56-php 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-gd 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-cli 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-dba 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-dbg 5.6.5-8.el6, rh-php56-php-fpm 5.6.5-8.el6, +22 more Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) rh-php56-php 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-gd 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-cli 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-dba 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-dbg 5.6.5-8.el7, rh-php56-php-fpm 5.6.5-8.el7, +20 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2016:0457

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

8.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 94% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.