CVE-2023-42445: Possible local file exfiltration by XML External entity injection

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.3 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-10-06 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-611

Description

Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. In some cases, when Gradle parses XML files, resolving XML external entities is not disabled. Combined with an Out Of Band XXE attack (OOB-XXE), just parsing XML can lead to exfiltration of local text files to a remote server. Gradle parses XML files for several purposes. Most of the time, Gradle parses XML files it generated or were already present locally. Only Ivy XML descriptors and Maven POM files can be fetched from remote repositories and parsed by Gradle. In Gradle 7.6.3 and 8.4, resolving XML external entities has been disabled for all use cases to protect against this vulnerability. Gradle will now refuse to parse XML files that have XML external entities.

Affected products

gradle: before 7.6.3; from 8.0.0 before 8.4.0 — fixed in 7.6.3, 8.4.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: gradle 7.6.3, 8.4.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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