CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-54988

Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference

Published: Aug 20, 2025 | Modified: Nov 04, 2025
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
9.4 CRITICAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:L
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

Critical XXE in Apache Tika (tika-parser-pdf-module) in Apache Tika 1.13 through and including 3.2.1 on all platforms allows an attacker to carry out XML External Entity injection via a crafted XFA file inside of a PDF. An attacker may be able to read sensitive data or trigger malicious requests to internal resources or third-party servers. Note that the tika-parser-pdf-module is used as a dependency in several Tika packages including at least: tika-parsers-standard-modules, tika-parsers-standard-package, tika-app, tika-grpc and tika-server-standard.

Users are recommended to upgrade to version 3.2.2, which fixes this issue.

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
Tika Apache 1.13 (including) 3.2.2 (excluding)

Potential Mitigations

References