CVE-2025-66516 PUBLISHED

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

Assigner: apache
Reserved: 03.12.2025 Published: 04.12.2025 Updated: 26.02.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 8.4

Product Status

Vendor Apache Software Foundation
Product Apache Tika core
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1.13 to 3.2.1 (incl.)
Vendor Apache Software Foundation
Product Apache Tika parsers
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1.13 to 2.0.0 (excl.)
Vendor Apache Software Foundation
Product Apache Tika PDF parser module
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 2.0.0 to 3.2.1 (incl.)

References

Problem Types

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