XML External Entity (XXE) Injection Affecting org.apache.solr:solr-core package, versions [3.6.1,4.1.0)


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

CVSS assessment made by Snyk's Security Team

    Threat Intelligence

    EPSS
    0.24% (63rd percentile)

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-JAVA-ORGAPACHESOLR-30034
  • published 25 Dec 2016
  • disclosed 7 Dec 2013
  • credit Unknown

Overview

org.apache.solr:solr-core is an open source enterprise search platform built on Apache Lucene.

The UpdateRequestHandler for XML in Apache Solr before 4.1 allows remote attackers to have an unspecified impact via XML data containing an external entity declaration in conjunction with an entity reference, related to an XML External Entity (XXE) issue.

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.

CVSS Scores

version 3.1
Expand this section

Snyk

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

NVD

6.5 medium