Medium · published September 29, 2026
PyPy before versions 3.11.16 and 3.12.14 contains a use-after-free vulnerability in the pyexpat module's ExternalEntityParserCreate function that allows attackers to corrupt memory by supplying a crafted XML document to applications that create external-entity sub-parsers without retaining a reference to the parent parser. The child parser retains a raw C back-pointer to the parent parser struct while PyPy's tracing garbage collector can free the parent's C struct, causing bundled libexpat to dereference the freed pointer on every parsed token, producing memory corruption.