PSA: Libxslt is unmaintained and has 5 unpatched security bugs

43 burnt-resistor 11 8/29/2025, 3:57:46 AM vuxml.freebsd.org ↗

Comments (11)

Svip · 1h ago
Related:

"Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec" (9 days ago, 388p, 534c) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44952185

"XSLT removal will break multiple government and regulatory sites" (6 days ago, 157p, 142c) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987346

"Should the web platform adopt XSLT 3.0?" (6 days ago, 133p, 107c) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987552

"Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT" (6 days ago, 102p, 130c) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987239

imp0cat · 2h ago
Does this affect https://lxml.de/ ?
anonnon · 1h ago
Yes, as it's a front-end to both LibXML2 and LibXSLT.
burnt-resistor · 3h ago
Update 0: Fixed title, it's 5 rather than 4, and possibly another that's undisclosed.

Update 1: Apparently, GNOME bureaucracy is holding up the processing the application of a new maintainer for over a month now. Major browsers responded by deprecating/removing XSLT support. XSLT is/was mainly used for rendering and transforming SGML, HTML, and XML to other forms, I didn't even realize browsers supported it directly. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/issues/150

--- List

0: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/issues/139

1: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/issues/140

2: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/issues/144

3: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/issues/148

4: BIGSLEEP-433713988 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/433713988

> Please be aware: nobody will merge your fix because there are no active maintainers remaining. (If anybody is interested in maintaining libxslt, please let me know.) Having patches here will help a lot anyway, though, since downstream vendors will be able to use them.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxslt/-/issues/144#note_245...

List of FreeBSD ports that are unlikely to build without `make DISABLE_VULNERABILITIES=yes`:

https://pastebin.com/raw/5dQ2U46f

I guess, technically, if libxslt isn't statically or dynamically linked in like browsers and some other programs do and only used as a build dep such as through xsltproc, there's not really a security issue after a build. For all runtime use / direct linking of libxslt, it's still a problem.

bkor · 29m ago
> Update 1: Apparently, GNOME bureaucracy is holding up the processing the application of a new maintainer for over a month now.

Could you explain this? You link to a closed bugreport where a new maintainer stepped up. A previously experienced developer said it'll take several months at least to get up to speed.

That a new person needs to be vouched for a critical library is pretty critical. There's been several examples where a malicious developer took over a critical project.

bawolff · 32m ago
> Major browsers responded by deprecating/removing XSLT support

Its probably wrong to think the browser stuff is solely due to lack of maintainer.

ZiiS · 2m ago
Not directly, but if the most used implementation is unmaintained how popular is the language?