Main Vulnerability Database Vulnerabilities #VU38176

XML External Entity injection in Apache Tika - CVE-2016-4434

Published: September 30, 2017 / Updated: August 8, 2020

Vulnerability identifier: #VU38176

CSH Severity: High

CVSS v4: 8.6 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]

CVE-ID: CVE-2016-4434

CWE-ID: CWE-611

Exploitation vector: Remote access

Exploit availability: No public exploit available

Vulnerability details

The vulnerability allows a remote non-authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code.

Apache Tika before 1.13 does not properly initialize the XML parser or choose handlers, which might allow remote attackers to conduct XML External Entity (XXE) attacks via vectors involving (1) spreadsheets in OOXML files and (2) XMP metadata in PDF and other file formats, a related issue to CVE-2016-2175.

Affected software

Apache Tika

How to mitigate CVE-2016-4434

Install update from vendor's website.

External References

Related Security Bulletins