CVE-2025-54988

Published Aug 20, 2025

Last updated 4 months ago

CVSS high 8.4

Overview

Description: 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.
Source: security@apache.org
NVD status: Modified
Products: tika

Risk scores

CVSS 3.1

Type: Secondary
Base score: 8.4
Impact score: 5.9
Exploitability score: 2.5
Vector string: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity: HIGH

Weaknesses

security@apache.org: CWE-611

Hype score: Not currently trending

Configurations

[
  {
    "nodes": [
      {
        "cpeMatch": [
          {
            "criteria": "cpe:2.3:a:apache:tika:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*",
            "matchCriteriaId": "06E31452-81F9-4B50-A6E1-EE8FE3E148BD",
            "versionEndExcluding": "3.2.2",
            "versionStartIncluding": "1.13",
            "vulnerable": true
          }
        ],
        "negate": false,
        "operator": "OR"
      }
    ]
  }
]

Critical XXE in Apache Tika tika-core (1.13-3.2.1), tika-pdf-module (2.0.0-3.2.1) and tika-parsers (1.13-1.28.5) modules on all platforms allows an attacker to carry out XML External Entity injection via a crafted XFA file inside of a PDF. This CVE covers the same vulnerability as in CVE-2025-54988. However, this CVE expands the scope of affected packages in two ways. First, while the entrypoint for the vulnerability was the tika-parser-pdf-module as reported in CVE-2025-54988, the vulnerability and its fix were in tika-core. Users who upgraded the tika-parser-pdf-module but did not upgrade tika-core to >= 3.2.2 would still be vulnerable. Second, the original report failed to mention that in the 1.x Tika releases, the PDFParser was in the "org.apache.tika:tika-parsers" module.•CVE-2025-66516

References

Sources include official advisories and independent security research.

Overview

Risk scores

CVSS 3.1

Weaknesses

Social media

Configurations

Related CVEs

References