CVE-2025-66516

Summary

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.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
Apache Software FoundationApache Tika core1.13 <= 3.2.1affected
Apache Software FoundationApache Tika parsers1.13 < 2.0.0affected
Apache Software FoundationApache Tika PDF parser module2.0.0 <= 3.2.1affected

Weaknesses

  • CWE-611: CWE-611 Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: poc
    • Automatable: no
    • Technical Impact: total

References