XML External Entity (XXE) Injection Affecting org.springframework:spring-oxm package, versions [3.0.0.RELEASE,3.2.9.RELEASE)[4.0.0.RELEASE,4.0.5.RELEASE)


Severity

Recommended
0.0
high
0
10

CVSS assessment made by Snyk's Security Team. Learn more

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.18% (56th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-JAVA-ORGSPRINGFRAMEWORK-30159
  • published25 Dec 2016
  • disclosed25 Dec 2016
  • creditUnknown

Introduced: 25 Dec 2016

CVE-2014-0225  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-611  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade org.springframework:spring-oxm to version 3.2.9.RELEASE, 4.0.5.RELEASE or higher.

Overview

org.springframework:spring-oxm is a Spring Object/XML Marshalling library.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to XML External Entity (XXE) Injection. This is due to not disabling the resolution of URI references by default in a DTD declaration. This occurs only when processing user provided XML documents.

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