IMPROPER RESTRICTION OF XML EXTERNAL ENTITY REFERENCE CWE-611

published 2022-02-24 4 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-6614

cvss: 7.1; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.3%; EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 27%
public exploits: 0; none known

A local, authenticated attacker could use an XML External Entity (XXE) attack to exploit weakly configured XML files to access local or remote content. A successful exploit could potentially cause a denial-of-service condition and allow the attacker to arbitrarily read any local file via system-level services.

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

cisa ICSA-20-177-02 updated 2020-06-25 cvss 8.4

Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Services Platform XXE

Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Services Platform <= 6.11.00
affected: vendor fix, mitigation “For more information please see Rockwell Automation Knowledgebase article 1092746” rockwellautomation.custhelp.com

From CISA ICS and IT advisories (CSAF, https://github.com/cisagov/CSAF), a U.S. Government work; changed: reduced to products, statuses and remediations. CISA notification · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial
Assessed: 18 mo ago (2025-04-17)

Exploit prediction

0.34% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 27% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CISA ADP	3.1	7.1	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
NVD	3.1	7.1	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
CNA	3.1	7.1	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
NVD	2.0	5.6	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:N/A:P

Affected products

Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Services Platform

Classification

Weakness

CWE-611 Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference

References

cisa.gov /uscert/ics/advisories/icsa-20-177-02
mitigation, third-party-advisory, us-government-resource

Sources

CVE List CVE-2020-14478
NVD CVE-2020-14478

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary