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Fencer Vulns
high 8.4

CVE-2025-66516 in the critical feed json

Apache Tika core, Apache Tika parsers, Apache Tika PDF parser module: Update to CVE-2025-54988 to expand scope of artifacts affected

published 2025-12-04 11 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-201189 , GHSA-f58c-gq56-vjjf

cvss
8.4
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
89.0%
EPSS 89.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.7%
public exploits
1
Metasploit, plus a Nuclei check

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.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.tika:tika-core 3.2.2
  • maven org.apache.tika:tika-parsers 2.0.0
  • maven org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-module 3.2.2
  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Tika parsers 2.0.0
  • tika Debian 11 1.22-2+deb11u1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-66516

  • 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-2025-66516

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-2025-66516 updated cvss 10.0

tika-core: tika-parsers: tika-parser-pdf-module: Apache Tika core, Apache Tika parsers, Apache Tika PDF parser module: Update to CVE-2025-54988 to expand scope of artifacts affected

  • Red Hat build of Apache Camel 4.14.2 for Spring Boot 3.5.8
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2025:23143
  • Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces (RHOSDS) 3.25 devspaces 3.25.0-1765276570, devspaces 3.25.0-1765299828
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2025:23225
  • Red Hat build of Apache Camel for Spring Boot 4 tika-parser-pdf-module
    not affected: component not present
  • Red Hat Fuse 7 tika-core, tika-parsers
    not affected: vulnerable code not in execute path
  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 tika-core, tika-parsers, tika-parser-pdf-module Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8 tika-core, tika-parsers, tika-parser-pdf-module Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack tika-core, tika-parsers, tika-parser-pdf-module Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces (RHOSDS) 3.25 devspaces 3.25.0-1764891834, devspaces 3.25.0-1764892045, devspaces 3.25.0-1764892466, devspaces 3.25.0-1764892891, devspaces 3.25.0-1765225950, devspaces 3.25.0-1765246979, +8 more
    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

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

89.02% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.7% 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
NVD 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-core
>=1.13, <3.2.2
3.2.2
maven org.apache.tika:tika-parsers
>=1.13, <2.0.0
2.0.0
maven org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-module
>=2.0.0, <3.2.2
3.2.2

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Tika core
  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Tika parsers
  • 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.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.