Homepage
About Snyk

XML External Entity (XXE) Injection Affecting org.apache.nifi:nifi-security-utils package, versions [,1.4.0)

0.0
medium

Snyk CVSS

    Attack Complexity Low
    Confidentiality High

    Threat Intelligence

    EPSS 0.05% (16th percentile)
Expand this section
NVD
6.5 medium

Do your applications use this vulnerable package?

In a few clicks we can analyze your entire application and see what components are vulnerable in your application, and suggest you quick fixes.

Test your applications
  • Snyk ID SNYK-JAVA-ORGAPACHENIFI-31562
  • published 9 Nov 2017
  • disclosed 1 Oct 2017
  • credit Paweł Gocyla
Report a new vulnerability Found a mistake?

Introduced: 1 Oct 2017

CVE-2017-12623 Open this link in a new tab
CWE-611 Open this link in a new tab

How to fix?

Upgrade org.apache.nifi:nifi-security-util to version 1.4.0 or higher.

Overview

org.apache.nifi:nifi-security-util is an easy to use, powerful, and reliable system to process and distribute data.

Affected versions of the package are vulnerable to XML External Entity (XXE) Injection. An authorized user could upload a template which contained malicious code and accessed sensitive files via an XML External Entity (XXE) attack. The fix to properly handle XML External Entities was applied on the Apache NiFi 1.4.0 release. Users running a prior 1.x release should upgrade to the appropriate release.

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 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 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.