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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.8

CVE-2025-54988 in the critical feed json

Apache Tika PDF parser module: XXE vulnerability in PDFParser's handling of XFA

published 2025-08-20 14 mo ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-p72g-pv48-7w9x , EUVD-2025-25435

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
47.9%
EPSS 47.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 98%
public exploits
1
Metasploit, plus a Nuclei check

Summary

Critical XXE in Apache Tika (tika-parser-pdf-module) in Apache Tika 1.13 through and including 3.2.1 on all platforms allows an attacker to carry out XML External Entity injection via a crafted XFA file inside of a PDF. An attacker may be able to read sensitive data or trigger malicious requests to internal resources or third-party servers. Note that the tika-parser-pdf-module is used as a dependency in several Tika packages including at least: tika-parsers-standard-modules, tika-parsers-standard-package, tika-app, tika-grpc and tika-server-standard.

Users are recommended to upgrade to version 3.2.2, which fixes this issue.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-module 3.2.2
  • maven org.apache.tika:tika-parsers 2.0.0-ALPHA
  • apache tika 3.2.2
  • tika Debian 11 1.22-2+deb11u1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-54988

  • tika Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 1.22-2+deb11u1build0.22.04.1
  • tika Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS 1.22-1ubuntu0.1~esm2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-54988

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 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-2025-54988 updated cvss 9.4

org.apache.tika/tika-parser-pdf-module: Apache Tika PDF parser module: XXE vulnerability in PDFParser's handling of XFA

  • Red Hat build of Apache Camel for Spring Boot 4 tika-parser-pdf-module
    not affected: vulnerable code not present
  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 tika-parser-pdf-module Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8 tika-parser-pdf-module Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack tika-parser-pdf-module
    not affected: component 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

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (Metasploit auxiliary/scanner/http/elasticsearch_tika_xfa_xxe)
  2. Published

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
9 mo ago

Exploit prediction

47.95% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 98% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CISA ADP 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CNA 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
GitHub 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-module
>=1.13, <3.2.2
3.2.2
maven org.apache.tika:tika-parsers
>=1.13, <2.0.0-ALPHA
2.0.0-ALPHA

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Tika PDF parser module

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.