What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-54988: Apache Tika PDF parser module: XXE vulnerability in PDFParser's handling of XFA

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.4 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 47.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2025-08-20 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-611

Description

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.

Affected products

• Apache Software Foundation Apache Tika: from 1.13 before 3.2.2 — fixed in 3.2.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Apache Software Foundation Apache Tika 3.2.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

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

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