XXE in Apache PDFBox

1) XML External Entity injection

EUVDB-ID: #VU28194

Risk: Medium

CVSSv3.1: 5.7 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2019-0228

CWE-ID: CWE-611 - Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference ('XXE')

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to gain access to sensitive information.

The vulnerability exists due to insufficient validation of user-supplied XML input. A remote attacker can pass a specially crafted  XFDF file to the affected application and view contents of arbitrary files on the system or initiate requests to external systems.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may allow an attacker to view contents of arbitrary file on the server or perform network scanning of internal and external infrastructure.

Mitigation

Install updates from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

PDFBox: 2.0.14

External links

http://lists.apache.org/thread.html/1a3756557f8cb02790b7183ccf7665ae23f608a421c4f723113bca79@%3Cusers.pdfbox.apache.org%3E
http://lists.apache.org/thread.html/8a19bd6d43e359913341043c2a114f91f9e4ae170059539ad1f5673c@%3Ccommits.tika.apache.org%3E
http://lists.apache.org/thread.html/bc8db1bf459f1ad909da47350ed554ee745abe9f25f2b50cad4e06dd@%3Cserver-dev.james.apache.org%3E
http://lists.apache.org/thread.html/be86fcd7cd423a3fe6b73a3cb9d7cac0b619d0deb99e6b5d172c98f4@%3Ccommits.tika.apache.org%3E
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/6HKVPTJWZGUB4MH4AAOWMRJHRDBYFHGJ/
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/POPOGHJ5CVMUVCRQU7APBAN5IVZGZFDX/
http://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuapr2020.html

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.