Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when setting an attribute value via Nokogiri::XML::Attr#value= or #content=

Summary

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.

Nokogiri 1.19.4 preserves any already-wrapped attribute child nodes before replacing the attribute value.

JRuby is not affected.

Severity

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. Already-wrapped attribute child nodes are preserved before the value is replaced.

Mitigation

Upgrade to Nokogiri 1.19.4 or later.

As a workaround, avoid accessing attribute child nodes directly via Attr#child or similar before mutating the same attribute’s value.

Credit

This issue was responsibly reported by Zheng Yu from depthfirst.com.