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.
Published: 2025-12-04
Updated: 2025-12-04
Base Score: 5.8
Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:P
Severity: Medium
Base Score: 7.8
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity: High
Base Score: 10
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H
Severity: Critical
EPSS: 0.00048
Tenable Research has classified this CVE under the following Vulnerability Watch classification, which includes active and historical (inactive) classifications. You can learn more about these classifications on our blog.
Vulnerability Being Monitored