CVE-2012-5656

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2013-01-18 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-611

Description

The rasterization process in Inkscape before 0.48.4 allows local users to read arbitrary files via an external entity in a SVG file, aka an XML external entity (XXE) injection attack.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 10.04, 11.10, 12.04, 12.10
Fedoraproject Fedora: 16, 17, 18
Inkscape: before 0.48.4 — fixed in 0.48.4
Opensuse: 11.4, 12.1, 12.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Inkscape 0.48.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/revision/11931
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2012-December/095024.html
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2013-January/095380.html
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2013-January/095398.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2013-02/msg00041.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2013-02/msg00043.html
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/12/20/3
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/56965
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1712-1
https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1025185
https://launchpad.net/inkscape/+milestone/0.48.4
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/inkscape/trunk/revision/11931

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