cyclonedx/cyclonedx-core-java · Security
CycloneDX Core (Java): BOM validation is vulnerable to XML External Entity injection
- GHSA ID
- GHSA-6fhj-vr9j-g45r
- CVE ID
- CVE-2025-64518
- Severity
- high
- Published
- Updated
- CVSS
- 7.5 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
- CVSS v3
- 7.5 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Description
Impact
The XML Validator used by cyclonedx-core-java was not configured securely, making the library vulnerable to XML External Entity (XXE) injection.
The fix for GHSA-683x-4444-jxh8 / CVE-2024-38374 has been incomplete in that it only fixed parsing of XML BOMs, but not validation.
Patches
The vulnerability has been fixed in cyclonedx-core-java version 11.0.1.
Workarounds
If feasible, applications can reject XML documents before handing them to cyclonedx-core-java for validation. This may be an option if incoming CycloneDX BOMs are known to be in JSON format.
References
- The issue was introduced via https://github.com/CycloneDX/cyclonedx-core-java/commit/162aa594f347b3f612fe0a45071693c3cd398ce9
- The issue was fixed via https://github.com/CycloneDX/cyclonedx-core-java/pull/737
- https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/XML_External_Entity_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet.html#schemafactory
CWEs
- CWE-611 · Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference
References
- https://github.com/CycloneDX/cyclonedx-core-java/security/advisories/GHSA-6fhj-vr9j-g45r ↗
- https://github.com/CycloneDX/cyclonedx-core-java/pull/737 ↗
- https://github.com/CycloneDX/cyclonedx-core-java/commit/162aa594f347b3f612fe0a45071693c3cd398ce9 ↗
- https://github.com/CycloneDX/cyclonedx-core-java/commit/af0ec75c93c03f93733a070c5132554490af5314 ↗
- https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/XML_External_Entity_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet.html#schemafactory ↗
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-64518 ↗
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-6fhj-vr9j-g45r ↗