Apache Tika 1.13-3.2.1 and tika-parsers 1.13-1.28.5 - XML External Entity Injection via Crafted XFA in PDF
Title source: llmExploitation Summary
EIP tracks 4 public exploits for CVE-2025-66516. PoCs published by chasingimpact, sid6224, intSheep. A Nuclei detection template is also available.
AI-analyzed exploit summary This repository contains a functional proof-of-concept exploit for CVE-2025-66516, an XXE vulnerability in Apache Tika. The exploit demonstrates file read, SSRF, and data exfiltration via crafted PDFs with malicious XFA content.
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.
Exploits (4)
This repository contains a functional proof-of-concept exploit for CVE-2025-66516, an XXE vulnerability in Apache Tika. The exploit demonstrates file read, SSRF, and data exfiltration via crafted PDFs with malicious XFA content.
This repository contains a proof-of-concept exploit for CVE-2025-66516, an XXE vulnerability in Apache Tika's PDF parser. The PoC includes scripts to generate malicious PDFs and a Java application demonstrating the vulnerability.
This repository contains a functional PoC for CVE-2025-66516, an XXE vulnerability in Apache Tika 3.2.1 and earlier. It generates a malicious PDF with an XFA form containing an external entity reference to read sensitive files (e.g., `/etc/passwd` or `C:/Windows/win.ini`) and verifies the vulnerability by parsing the PDF with Tika.
This repository contains a Python script that checks if a remote Apache Tika server is vulnerable to CVE-2025-66516 by querying the version header. It does not exploit the vulnerability but identifies vulnerable versions.
Nuclei Templates (1)
title:"Apache Tika"
title="Apache Tika"
References (2)
Scores
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H