CVE-2022-39353: xmldom allows multiple root nodes in a DOM

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2022-11-02 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

xmldom is a pure JavaScript W3C standard-based (XML DOM Level 2 Core) `DOMParser` and `XMLSerializer` module. xmldom parses XML that is not well-formed because it contains multiple top level elements, and adds all root nodes to the `childNodes` collection of the `Document`, without reporting any error or throwing. This breaks the assumption that there is only a single root node in the tree, which led to issuance of CVE-2022-39299 as it is a potential issue for dependents. Update to @xmldom/xmldom@~0.7.7, @xmldom/xmldom@~0.8.4 (dist-tag latest) or @xmldom/xmldom@>=0.9.0-beta.4 (dist-tag next). As a workaround, please one of the following approaches depending on your use case: instead of searching for elements in the whole DOM, only search in the `documentElement`or reject a document with a document that has more then 1 `childNode`.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 10.0
xmldom: before 0.6.0; from 0.7.0 before 0.7.7; from 0.8.0 before 0.8.4; 0.9.0-beta1, 0.9.0-beta2, 0.9.0-beta3 — fixed in 0.6.0, 0.7.7, 0.8.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: xmldom 0.6.0, 0.7.7, 0.8.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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