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NTAP-20210625-0002 — May 2021 Libxml2 Vulnerabilities in NetApp Products

Published 2021-06-25 · Updated 2025-05-15 · Status: Final · Exploitation: Public · Severity: HIGH 8.8 · ONTAP affected: Yes

Official advisory: NTAP-20210625-0002 on security.netapp.com ↗. Affected versions, fixed releases, and workarounds live there — this page is a summary.

Product family: Active IQ Unified Manager · Cloud Backup / AltaVault / SteelStore · SolidFire / NetApp HCI · Other NetApp products · ONTAP · SnapManager / Snap utilities  |  ONTAP-relevant  |  highest CVSS: 8.8

CVEs in this advisory

What the CVE records say

CVE-2021-3517 — There is a flaw in the xml entity encoding functionality of libxml2 in versions before 2.9.11. An attacker who is able to supply a crafted file to be processed by an application linked with the affected functionality of libxml2 could trigger an out-of-bounds read. The most likely impact of this flaw is to application availability, with some potential impact to confidentiality and integrity if an attacker is able to use memory information to further exploit the application.

CVE-2021-3518 — There's a flaw in libxml2 in versions before 2.9.11. An attacker who is able to submit a crafted file to be processed by an application linked with libxml2 could trigger a use-after-free. The greatest impact from this flaw is to confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

CVE-2021-3537 — A vulnerability found in libxml2 in versions before 2.9.11 shows that it did not propagate errors while parsing XML mixed content, causing a NULL dereference. If an untrusted XML document was parsed in recovery mode and post-validated, the flaw could be used to crash the application. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to system availability.

Impact

Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could lead to disclosure of sensitive information, addition or modification of data, or Denial of Service (DoS).

Affected products

Official fixes

What to do

  1. Check the affected products listed above against the official advisory's affected-versions table — that is where the exact ONTAP 9 release, ONTAP tool, or management product versions are named.
  2. If affected and a fixed release exists, plan the upgrade — see the ONTAP upgrade runbook.
  3. If exploitation is listed as "active", treat remediation as urgent and review exposure (management LIFs, ONTAP S3, SnapMirror endpoints).
  4. Harden in parallel: security hardening baseline and ransomware protection on ONTAP.

Related reading

Browse all ONTAP CVEs → · Security hub