CVE-2026-33036 PUBLISHED

fast-xml-parser affected by numeric entity expansion bypassing all entity expansion limits (incomplete fix for CVE-2026-26278)

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 17.03.2026 Published: 20.03.2026 Updated: 20.03.2026

fast-xml-parser allows users to process XML from JS object without C/C++ based libraries or callbacks. Versions 4.0.0-beta.3 through 5.5.5 contain a bypass vulnerability where numeric character references (&#NNN;, &#xHH;) and standard XML entities completely evade the entity expansion limits (e.g., maxTotalExpansions, maxExpandedLength) added to fix CVE-2026-26278, enabling XML entity expansion Denial of Service. The root cause is that replaceEntitiesValue() in OrderedObjParser.js only enforces expansion counting on DOCTYPE-defined entities while the lastEntities loop handling numeric/standard entities performs no counting at all. An attacker supplying 1M numeric entity references like A can force ~147MB of memory allocation and heavy CPU usage, potentially crashing the process—even when developers have configured strict limits. This issue has been fixed in version 5.5.6.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS Score: 7.5

Product Status

Vendor NaturalIntelligence
Product fast-xml-parser
Versions
  • Version >= 4.0.0-beta.3, < 5.5.6 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-776: Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs ('XML Entity Expansion') CWE