Critical

Apache Tika has XXE vulnerability

  • Disclosed: 04.12.2025
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 12:22

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 software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.apache.tika:tika-core >= 1.13, < 3.2.2 3.2.2
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-module >= 2.0.0, < 3.2.2 3.2.2
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.apache.tika:tika-parsers >= 1.13, < 2.0.0 2.0.0

References

CVSS score -
CVSS vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-611
Platform
Java / Kotlin (Maven)
Package
org.apache.tika:tika-core, org.apache.tika:tika-parser-pdf-module, org.apache.tika:tika-parsers
Disclosed
04.12.2025
Updated
11.10.2026 12:22

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-f58c-gq56-vjjf - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: org.apache.tika:tika-parsers

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

Total entries
5
First → latest
10.2018 12.2025
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 2
  • Medium 3

Disclosures per year

  1. 2018: 2
  2. 2019: 1
  3. 2020: 0
  4. 2021: 0
  5. 2022: 0
  6. 2023: 0
  7. 2024: 0
  8. 2025: 2
  9. 2026: 0
  1. Apache Tika has XXE vulnerability this entry
    Critical CVE-2025-66516 >= 1.13, < 2.0.0 2.0.0
  2. Critical · 9.8 CVE-2025-54988 >= 1.13, < 2.0.0-ALPHA 2.0.0-ALPHA
  3. Medium · 6.5 CVE-2019-10093 >= 1.19, < 1.22 1.22
  4. Medium · 6.5 CVE-2018-17197 >= 1.8, < 1.20 1.20
  5. Medium · 5.5 CVE-2018-1339 < 1.18 1.18

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