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CVE-2025-66516highCWE-611

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

58Vexday Risk Score

Patch soon. It has a working public exploit.

ssvc Attendcvss 8.4epss 88%
from disclosure to weapon0 days
Published on NVDDec 4
metasploitAug 20
exploitation probability
88%top 1% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
What the vendors declare (VEX)

Official vendor statements in CSAF/VEX format: whether their product is affected, already fixed, or ruled out — and why. These are the vendor's assertions, not Vexday's judgment.

Red HatVEX document ↗
Fixed
2 products (9 components)
Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces (RHOSDS) 3.25 · Red Hat build of Apache Camel 4.14.2 for Spring Boot 3.5.8
fix ↗
Not affected
6 products (65 components) — because the vulnerable code is not present in the product
Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces (RHOSDS) 3.25 · Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 · Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8 · Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack · Red Hat Fuse 7 · and others 1
In short

Apache Tika fails to safely process PDF files containing malicious XML data, allowing attackers to read sensitive files or execute commands on affected systems. This flaw affects multiple Tika components across different versions.

Technical detail

XXE (XML External Entity) injection vulnerability in Apache Tika's PDF parsing logic triggered via crafted XFA (XML Forms Architecture) content within PDF files. Exploitation requires only a specially crafted PDF file and no authentication; impact includes arbitrary file disclosure and potential remote code execution. The vulnerability persists in tika-core across versions 1.13-3.2.1 even if tika-pdf-module is patched, and affects tika-parsers 1.x releases.

Summary generated and translated by AI from the official 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.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Affected products
Apache Software Foundation · Apache Tika coreApache Software Foundation · Apache Tika parsersApache Software Foundation · Apache Tika PDF parser module
References
https://cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-54988https://lists.apache.org/thread/s5x3k93nhbkqzztp1olxotoyjpdlps9k