CVE-2022-39353 CRITICAL

CVE-2022-39353: xmldom allows multiple root nodes in a DOM

Vendor Xmldom
Product xmldom
Weakness CWE-20 · Input validation
Published November 2, 2022
Last update April 22, 2025

CVSS base score

9.4/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality Low
Integrity High

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

xmldom is a pure JavaScript W3C standard-based (XML DOM Level 2 Core) `DOMParser` and `XMLSerializer` module. xmldom parses XML that is not well-formed because it contains multiple top level elements, and adds all root nodes to the `childNodes` collection of the `Document`, without reporting any error or throwing. This breaks the assumption that there is only a single root node in the tree, which led to issuance of CVE-2022-39299 as it is a potential issue for dependents. Update to @xmldom/xmldom@~0.7.7, @xmldom/xmldom@~0.8.4 (dist-tag latest) or @xmldom/xmldom@>=0.9.0-beta.4 (dist-tag next). As a workaround, please one of the following approaches depending on your use case: instead of searching for elements in the whole DOM, only search in the `documentElement`or reject a document with a document that has more then 1 `childNode`.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

November 2, 2022 CVE published
April 22, 2025 Record updated