It was discovered that the JAXP component of OpenJDK did not properly count total size of the expanded general entities and therefore did not properly enforce the totalEntitySizeLimit limit. An attacker able to make a Java application parse a specially crafted XML file could use this flaw to make the application use and excessive amount of memory and possibly exit on out of memory condition. JAXP XML parsing limits are described on the following page: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jaxp/limits/limits.html
The use of general entities inside tag attribute values allows bypassing the limit.
Public now via Oracle Critical Patch Update - January 2016. Fixed in Oracle Java SE 6u111, 7u95, and 8u71. External References: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/cpujan2016-2367955.html#AppendixJAVA
OpenJDK 8 upstream commit: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8u/jdk8u/jaxp/rev/6568ef042ca5
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Via RHSA-2016:0050 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0050.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2016:0049 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0049.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Oracle Java for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Oracle Java for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Oracle Java for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2016:0057 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0057.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Oracle Java for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Oracle Java for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Oracle Java for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2016:0056 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0056.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Oracle Java for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Oracle Java for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2016:0055 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0055.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Via RHSA-2016:0053 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0053.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Via RHSA-2016:0054 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0054.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2016:0067 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0067.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Supplementary for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Supplementary for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Via RHSA-2016:0101 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0101.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Supplementary for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Via RHSA-2016:0100 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0100.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Supplementary for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Via RHSA-2016:0098 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0098.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Supplementary for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Supplementary for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Via RHSA-2016:0099 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0099.html
This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Satellite 5.6 Red Hat Satellite 5.7 Via RHSA-2016:1430 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016:1430