CVE-2025-66516: Apache Tika core, Apache Tika parsers, Apache Tika PDF parser module: Update to CVE-2025-54988 to expand scope of artifacts affected

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 89.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2025-12-04 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-611

Description

Critical XXE in Apache Tika tika-core (1.13-3.2.1), tika-pdf-module (2.0.0-3.2.1) and tika-parsers (1.13-1.28.5) modules on all platforms allows an attacker to carry out XML External Entity injection via a crafted XFA file inside of a PDF. This CVE covers the same vulnerability as in CVE-2025-54988. However, this CVE expands the scope of affected packages in two ways. First, while the entrypoint for the vulnerability was the tika-parser-pdf-module as reported in CVE-2025-54988, the vulnerability and its fix were in tika-core. Users who upgraded the tika-parser-pdf-module but did not upgrade tika-core to >= 3.2.2 would still be vulnerable. Second, the original report failed to mention that in the 1.x Tika releases, the PDFParser was in the "org.apache.tika:tika-parsers" module.

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

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