CVE-2025-54988

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.

Score

CVSS 3.1 9.8 Critical

Status

Modified - security@apache.org

Published

2025-08-20

Last modified

2026-02-26

Weaknesses

CWE-611

Affected products

• Tika (Apache)
• Apache Tika Pdf Parser Module (Apache Software Foundation)

References

• https://lists.apache.org/thread/8xn3rqy6kz5b3l1t83kcofkw0w4mmj1w
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/08/20/2
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/08/20/3
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00030.html