CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-26229

Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference

Published: Nov 23, 2020 | Modified: Dec 01, 2020
CVSS 3.x
3.7
LOW
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L
CVSS 2.x
3.6 LOW
AV:N/AC:H/Au:S/C:P/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

TYPO3 is an open source PHP based web content management system. In TYPO3 from version 10.4.0, and before version 10.4.10, RSS widgets are susceptible to XML external entity processing. This vulnerability is reasonable, but is theoretical - it was not possible to actually reproduce the vulnerability with current PHP versions of supported and maintained system distributions. At least with libxml2 version 2.9, the processing of XML external entities is disabled per default - and cannot be exploited. Besides that, a valid backend user account is needed. Update to TYPO3 version 10.4.10 to fix the problem described.

Weakness

The product processes an XML document that can contain XML entities with URIs that resolve to documents outside of the intended sphere of control, causing the product to embed incorrect documents into its output.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Typo3 Typo3 10.0.0 (including) 10.4.10 (excluding)

Extended Description

XML documents optionally contain a Document Type Definition (DTD), which, among other features, enables the definition of XML entities. It is possible to define an entity by providing a substitution string in the form of a URI. The XML parser can access the contents of this URI and embed these contents back into the XML document for further processing. By submitting an XML file that defines an external entity with a file:// URI, an attacker can cause the processing application to read the contents of a local file. For example, a URI such as “file:///c:/winnt/win.ini” designates (in Windows) the file C:\Winnt\win.ini, or file:///etc/passwd designates the password file in Unix-based systems. Using URIs with other schemes such as http://, the attacker can force the application to make outgoing requests to servers that the attacker cannot reach directly, which can be used to bypass firewall restrictions or hide the source of attacks such as port scanning. Once the content of the URI is read, it is fed back into the application that is processing the XML. This application may echo back the data (e.g. in an error message), thereby exposing the file contents.

Potential Mitigations

References