Vulnerabilities
Misconfiguration
Compliance
CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2019-5427

Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs ('XML Entity Expansion')

Published: Apr 22, 2019 | Modified: Sep 05, 2025
CVSS 3.x
7.5
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
5 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
4.4 LOW
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Ubuntu
MEDIUM
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Additional information
NVDhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-5427
CWEhttps://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/776.html

c3p0 version < 0.9.5.4 may be exploited by a billion laughs attack when loading XML configuration due to missing protections against recursive entity expansion when loading configuration.

Weakness

The product uses XML documents and allows their structure to be defined with a Document Type Definition (DTD), but it does not properly control the number of recursive definitions of entities.

Affected Software

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
C3p0Mchange*0.9.5.4 (excluding)
Red Hat Fuse 7.6.0RedHatc3p0*
C3p0Ubuntubionic*
C3p0Ubuntucosmic*
C3p0Ubuntudevel*
C3p0Ubuntudisco*
C3p0Ubuntueoan*
C3p0Ubuntuesm-apps/bionic*
C3p0Ubuntuesm-apps/focal*
C3p0Ubuntuesm-apps/jammy*
C3p0Ubuntuesm-apps/noble*
C3p0Ubuntuesm-apps/xenial*
C3p0Ubuntuesm-infra-legacy/trusty*
C3p0Ubuntufocal*
C3p0Ubuntugroovy*
C3p0Ubuntuhirsute*
C3p0Ubuntuimpish*
C3p0Ubuntujammy*
C3p0Ubuntukinetic*
C3p0Ubuntulunar*
C3p0Ubuntumantic*
C3p0Ubuntunoble*
C3p0Ubuntuoracular*
C3p0Ubuntuplucky*
C3p0Ubuntutrusty*
C3p0Ubuntutrusty/esm*
C3p0Ubuntuupstream*
C3p0Ubuntuxenial*

Potential Mitigations

References

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