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Fencer Intel
critical 9.8

CVE-2018-11788 json

XML External Entity Reference in Apache Karaf

published 7y ago modified 4mo ago also GHSA-92wj-x78c-m4fx , EUVD-2019-0180

cvss
9.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
7.3%
EPSS 7.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 94%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Apache Karaf provides a features deployer, which allows users to "hot deploy" a features XML by dropping the file directly in the deploy folder. The features XML is parsed by XMLInputFactory class. Apache Karaf XMLInputFactory class doesn't contain any mitigation codes against XXE. This is a potential security risk as an user can inject external XML entities in Apache Karaf version prior to 4.1.7 or 4.2.2. It has been fixed in Apache Karaf 4.1.7 and 4.2.2 releases.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.karaf.specs:org.apache.karaf.specs.java.xml 4.1.7, 4.2.2
  • apache karaf 4.1.7

Is CVE-2018-11788 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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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-2018-11788 updated cvss 6.3

karaf: XML external entity processing

  • Red Hat Fuse 7 karaf karaf
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat JBoss A-MQ 6 karaf karaf Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 karaf karaf Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works 6 karaf karaf
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8 (Liberty) opendaylight Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9 (Mitaka) opendaylight Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton) opendaylight
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens) opendaylight
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 14 (Rocky) opendaylight
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”

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

7.35% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 94% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 9.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.0 9.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.karaf.specs:org.apache.karaf.specs.java.xml
>=4.2.0, <4.2.2
<4.1.7
4.2.2
4.1.7

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Karaf

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.