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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.8

CVE-2023-42445 json

Possible local file exfiltration by XML External entity injection

published 2023-10-06 3 y ago modified 2026-09-08 2 mo ago also BIT-gradle-2023-42445 , EUVD-2023-46893 , GHSA-mrff-q8qj-xvg8

cvss
6.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.8%
EPSS 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 56%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. In some cases, when Gradle parses XML files, resolving XML external entities is not disabled. Combined with an Out Of Band XXE attack (OOB-XXE), just parsing XML can lead to exfiltration of local text files to a remote server. Gradle parses XML files for several purposes. Most of the time, Gradle parses XML files it generated or were already present locally. Only Ivy XML descriptors and Maven POM files can be fetched from remote repositories and parsed by Gradle. In Gradle 7.6.3 and 8.4, resolving XML external entities has been disabled for all use cases to protect against this vulnerability. Gradle will now refuse to parse XML files that have XML external entities.

Patch / fix

  • bitnami gradle 7.6.3, 8.4.0
  • gradle gradle 7.6.3, 8.4.0

Vendor advisories

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

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-42445 updated cvss 5.3

gradle: Possible local text file exfiltration by XML External entity injection

  • Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry 2 gradle gradle
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat build of OptaPlanner 8 gradle gradle Red Hat Integration Camel K 1 gradle gradle
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 gradle gradle Red Hat Process Automation 7 gradle gradle
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Software Collections rh-maven36-byte-buddy, rh-maven36-byte-buddy-agent, rh-maven36-byte-buddy-parent, rh-maven36-byte-buddy-javadoc, rh-maven36-byte-buddy-maven-plugin
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat AMQ Streams 2.6.0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2023:7678
  • Red Hat Integration Camel Quarkus 2 gradle gradle Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 gradle gradle Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack gradle gradle
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.78% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 56% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
OSV 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
bitnami gradle
<7.6.3
>=8.0.0, <8.4.0
7.6.3
8.4.0

Affected products

  • gradle gradle

Classification

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

References

Sources

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.