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XML External Entity (XXE) Injection Affecting org.apache.opennlp:opennlp-tools package, versions [1.5.1-incubating,1.8.2)

0.0
critical

Snyk CVSS

    Attack Complexity Low
    Confidentiality High
    Integrity High
    Availability High

    Threat Intelligence

    EPSS 0.51% (77th percentile)
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NVD
9.8 critical

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-JAVA-ORGAPACHEOPENNLP-31578
  • published 9 Nov 2017
  • disclosed 1 Oct 2017
  • credit Nishil Shah
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Introduced: 1 Oct 2017

CVE-2017-12620 Open this link in a new tab
CWE-611 Open this link in a new tab

How to fix?

Upgrade org.apache.opennlp:opennlp-tools to version 1.8.2 or higher.

Overview

org.apache.opennlp:opennlp-tools is an is a machine learning based toolkit for the processing of natural language text.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to XML External Entity (XXE) Injection. It is possible to perform an XXE attack when loading models or dictionaries from untrusted sources that contain XML.

When loading models or dictionaries that contain XML it is possible to perform an XXE attack, since Apache OpenNLP is a library, this only affects applications that load models or dictionaries from untrusted sources. The versions 1.5.0 to 1.5.3, 1.6.0, 1.7.0 to 1.7.2, 1.8.0 to 1.8.1 of Apache OpenNLP are affected.

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.