Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs ('XML Entity Expansion') Affecting renovate package, versions <43.84.0-r1


Severity

Recommended
low

Based on default assessment until relevant scores are available.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.04% (12th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-CHAINGUARDLATEST-RENOVATE-15753996
  • published23 Mar 2026
  • disclosed20 Mar 2026

Introduced: 20 Mar 2026

NewCVE-2026-33036  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-776  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Chainguard renovate to version 43.84.0-r1 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream renovate package and not the renovate package as distributed by Chainguard. See How to fix? for Chainguard relevant fixed versions and status.

fast-xml-parser allows users to process XML from JS object without C/C++ based libraries or callbacks. Versions 4.0.0-beta.3 through 5.5.5 contain a bypass vulnerability where numeric character references (&#NNN;, &#xHH;) and standard XML entities completely evade the entity expansion limits (e.g., maxTotalExpansions, maxExpandedLength) added to fix CVE-2026-26278, enabling XML entity expansion Denial of Service. The root cause is that replaceEntitiesValue() in OrderedObjParser.js only enforces expansion counting on DOCTYPE-defined entities while the lastEntities loop handling numeric/standard entities performs no counting at all. An attacker supplying 1M numeric entity references like &#65; can force ~147MB of memory allocation and heavy CPU usage, potentially crashing the process—even when developers have configured strict limits. This issue has been fixed in version 5.5.6.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1