[XERCESJ-1679] xercesImpl: Security threat CVE-2013-4002

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.4.0, 2.11.0
• Fix Version/s: 2.12.0
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Mark Symons
• Created: 03/Nov/16 14:59
• Updated: 27/Nov/17 10:22
• Resolved: 03/Nov/16 15:29

Description

CVE-2013-4002 is a CVE that implicates Java... but was later realised to really be caused by Xerces.

This is picked up as a "Security-High" vulnerability by Sonatype Nexus IQ analysis, who provide the following background info:

Description from CVE

Unspecified vulnerability in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in IBM Java 5.0 before 5.0 SR16-FP3, 6 before 6 SR14, 6.0.1 before 6.0.1 SR6, and 7 before 7 SR5 allows remote attackers to affect availability via unknown vectors.

Explanation

A flaw found in the way Xerces handles the processing of XML declarations allows for a Denial of service(DOS) attack while the server application processes the XML supplied by the remote user. Xerces is used as the built-in XML parser for certain versions of Java, hence the Java Runtime Environment was implicated in the CVE description. If this component showed up on a scan, then it is not because of the Java Runtime Environment.

Detection

You are vulnerable if your application uses Xerces to parse untrusted and/or user-created XML.

Recommendation

There is no non vulnerable version of this component at the time of this writing, but a fix was committed to the SVN repository. However, the last release was in 2013. Consider updating to the latest Java and switching to JAXP which is now part of the official JDK as of version 1.6

Root Cause

xercesImpl-2.11.0.jar <= XMLScanner.class : [, 2.12)

Issue Links

• Blocked: JENA-1364 Jena-core has dependency on vulnerable Xerces version
• relates to: XERCESJ-1685 Security threat CVE-2012-0881
• links to: Mention in xerces-j-dev mailing list archives