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Fencer Intel
high 7.8

CVE-2016-4434 json

Apache Tika does not properly initialize the XML parser or choose handlers

published 2017-09-29 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-4xr4-4c65-hj7f , EUVD-2018-0507

cvss
7.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.6%
EPSS 3.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 89%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Apache Tika before 1.13 does not properly initialize the XML parser or choose handlers, which might allow remote attackers to conduct XML External Entity (XXE) attacks via vectors involving (1) spreadsheets in OOXML files and (2) XMP metadata in PDF and other file formats, a related issue to CVE-2016-2175.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.tika:tika-core 1.13
  • tika Debian 11 1.18-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-4434

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2016-4434 updated cvss 4.4

tika: XML External Entity vulnerability

  • Red Hat BPM Suite 6 tika-core
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat JBoss BRMS 5 tika-core
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat JBoss BRMS 6 tika-core
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat JBoss Portal 6 tika-core
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Satellite 5 tika
    under investigation
  • Red Hat JBoss BPMS 6.4
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0249
  • Red Hat JBoss BRMS 6.4
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0248
  • Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization 6.3
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2017:0272
show 1 more
  • Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works 6 camel-tika
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

3.57% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 89% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.0 7.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.tika:tika-core
<1.13
1.13

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-611 Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.