CVE-2025-54988 HIGH

CVE-2025-54988: Apache Tika PDF parser module: XXE vulnerability in PDFParser's handling of XFA

Vendor Apache Software Foundation
Product Apache Tika PDF parser module
Weakness CWE-611 · XXE
Published August 20, 2025
Last update February 26, 2026

CVSS base score

8.4/10
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality High
Integrity High

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

Description

Critical XXE in Apache Tika (tika-parser-pdf-module) in Apache Tika 1.13 through and including 3.2.1 on all platforms allows an attacker to carry out XML External Entity injection via a crafted XFA file inside of a PDF. An attacker may be able to read sensitive data or trigger malicious requests to internal resources or third-party servers. Note that the tika-parser-pdf-module is used as a dependency in several Tika packages including at least: tika-parsers-standard-modules, tika-parsers-standard-package, tika-app, tika-grpc and tika-server-standard. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 3.2.2, which fixes this issue.

Key dates

Disclosure timeline

August 20, 2025 CVE published
February 26, 2026 Record updated