Dear libxml2 owners,

I am performing research about weaknesses in C open source programs. As
part of my research, I am studying weaknesses that may be vulnerabilities
in the Libxml2 project.

I found in the commit history of Libxml2 (commit 9acef28) the presence of
the following code snippet in the libxml.c file (Lines 1,597 - 1,612). I
believe that this commit presents a weakness that, If format strings can be
influenced by an attacker, they can be exploited. This weakness is
characterized by CWE Project as CWE-134: Use of Externally-Controlled
Format String. When an attacker can modify an externally-controlled format
string, this can lead to buffer overflows, denial of service, or data
representation problems.

Moreover, I performed a software testing strategy with respect to confirm
the vulnerability. We provide as input to the char *msg the value "%xtest"
and the function libxml_buildMessage return the value"fc0c748ex", exposing
a memory position.

This is the GitHub link to the commit:

https://github.com/GNOME/libxml2/commit/9acef289285008f81b4b66b4880baf600773cf67


Code snippet:
static char *
libxml_buildMessage(const char *msg, va_list ap){
  int chars;
  char *str;
  str = (char *) xmlMalloc(1000);
  if (str == NULL)
    return NULL;

  chars = vsnprintf(str, 999, msg, ap);
  if (chars >= 998)
    str[999] = 0;

  return str;
}

Looking at this code snippet, I am wondering if you could answer the
following brief questions:
We understand that this code has a weakness. Do you agree?
How do you detect weaknesses? Do you use any tool to detect them?
We would be very grateful if you say to us if you agree, and if you are
going to fix it.
-- 
Raphael de Carvalho Muniz, M.Sc.
Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/1454914002384966
e-Mail: raphaeld...@gmail.com / raph...@copin.ufcg.edu.br
Fone: +55 84 98801 1218
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