Apache Tika XXE Vulnerability via Crafted XFA File Inside a PDF
Date: 2025-08
Affected: maven/org.apache.tika:tika-parsers, maven/org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-module
Attack vector: other
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: Critical
CVE: CVE-2025-54988
CWE: CWE-611
CVSS: 9.8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

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.


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):