CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-26247

Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference

Published: Dec 30, 2020 | Modified: Oct 19, 2022
CVSS 3.x
4.3
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
4 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:N/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Nokogiri is a Rubygem providing HTML, XML, SAX, and Reader parsers with XPath and CSS selector support. In Nokogiri before version 1.11.0.rc4 there is an XXE vulnerability. XML Schemas parsed by Nokogiri::XML::Schema are trusted by default, allowing external resources to be accessed over the network, potentially enabling XXE or SSRF attacks. This behavior is counter to the security policy followed by Nokogiri maintainers, which is to treat all input as untrusted by default whenever possible. This is fixed in Nokogiri version 1.11.0.rc4.

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
Nokogiri Nokogiri * 1.11.0 (excluding)
Nokogiri Nokogiri 1.11.0-rc1 (including) 1.11.0-rc1 (including)
Nokogiri Nokogiri 1.11.0-rc2 (including) 1.11.0-rc2 (including)
Nokogiri Nokogiri 1.11.0-rc3 (including) 1.11.0-rc3 (including)

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