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GHSA-2rr5-8q37-2w7h CVE-2021-41098

Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference (XXE) in Nokogiri on JRuby

High RubyGems
Severity
7.5 / 10
High · CVSS 3.0
Exploit chance (EPSS)
1.46%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 73.56% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
CWE-611 Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference
Fix
1.12.5
Upgrade nokogiri to this version or later

Description

Severity

The Nokogiri maintainers have evaluated this as High Severity 7.5 (CVSS3.0) for JRuby users. (This security advisory does not apply to CRuby users.)

Impact

In Nokogiri v1.12.4 and earlier, on JRuby only, the SAX parser resolves external entities by default.

Users of Nokogiri on JRuby who parse untrusted documents using any of these classes are affected:

  • Nokogiri::XML::SAX::Parser
  • Nokogiri::HTML4::SAX::Parser or its alias Nokogiri::HTML::SAX::Parser
  • Nokogiri::XML::SAX::PushParser
  • Nokogiri::HTML4::SAX::PushParser or its alias Nokogiri::HTML::SAX::PushParser

Mitigation

JRuby users should upgrade to Nokogiri v1.12.5 or later. There are no workarounds available for v1.12.4 or earlier.

CRuby users are not affected.

Affected versions

RubyGems

PackageVulnerableFixed in
nokogiri
< 1.12.5
1.12.5

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

nokogiri RubyGems → 1.12.5

bundler
bundle update nokogiri # Gemfile: gem "nokogiri", ">= 1.12.5"

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.0 7.5

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

Weakness

CWE-611: Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference

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.

How to prevent it
  • Implementation, System Configuration: Many XML parsers and validators can be configured to disable external entity expansion.

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
  3. Latest EPSS score
AdvisorySeverityWhy it's related
GHSA-phwj-rprq-35pp
Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when setting an attribute value via `Nokogiri::XML::Attr#value=` or `#content=`
High Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-wfpw-mmfh-qq69
Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free in XInclude Processing
Low Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-p67v-3w7g-wjg7
Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when directly using `NokogirI::XML::XPathContext` beyond document lifetime
Medium Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-wjv4-x9w8-wm3h
Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when setting `Document#root=` to an invalid node type
Medium Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-5prr-v3j2-97mh
Nokogiri: Possible Out-of-Bounds Read in `Nokogiri::XML::NodeSet#[]`
High Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-9cv2-cfxc-v4v2
Nokogiri: Null Pointer Dereference calling methods on uninitialized wrapper classes
High Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-8678-w3jw-xfc2
Nokogiri: XML::Schema on JRuby allows network requests when NONET is set, bypassing CVE-2020-26247
Low Also affects nokogiri
GHSA-5v8h-3h3q-446p
Nokogiri: Possible Use-After-Free when `Nokogiri::XML::Document#encoding=` raises an exception
High Also affects nokogiri
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