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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2023-50262 json

Dompdf possible DoS caused by infinite recursion when parsing SVG images

published 2023-12-13 2 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-3qx2-6f78-w2j2 , EUVD-2023-3086

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.5%
EPSS 1.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 73%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Dompdf is an HTML to PDF converter for PHP. When parsing SVG images Dompdf performs an initial validation to ensure that paths within the SVG are allowed. One of the validations is that the SVG document does not reference itself. However, prior to version 2.0.4, a recursive chained using two or more SVG documents is not correctly validated. Depending on the system configuration and attack pattern this could exhaust the memory available to the executing process and/or to the server itself.

php-svg-lib, when run in isolation, does not support SVG references for `image` elements. However, when used in combination with Dompdf, php-svg-lib will process SVG images referenced by an `image` element. Dompdf currently includes validation to prevent self-referential `image` references, but a chained reference is not checked. A malicious actor may thus trigger infinite recursion by chaining references between two or more SVG images.

When Dompdf parses a malicious payload, it will crash due after exceeding the allowed execution time or memory usage. An attacker sending multiple request to a system can potentially cause resource exhaustion to the point that the system is unable to handle incoming request.

Version 2.0.4 contains a fix for this issue.

Patch / fix

  • packagist dompdf/dompdf 2.0.4
  • php-dompdf Debian 12 2.0.3+dfsg-1+deb12u1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-50262

Exploit prediction

1.46% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 73% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/dompdf/dompdf/security/advisories/GHSA-3qx2-6f78-w2j2 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
GitHub 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
packagist dompdf/dompdf
<2.0.4
2.0.4

Affected products

  • dompdf dompdf

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-674 Uncontrolled Recursion

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.