CVE-2026-44020 PUBLISHED

Docling: Unsafe XML Entity Expansion in USPTO Patent Backend

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 04.05.2026 Published: 24.06.2026 Updated: 24.06.2026

Docling simplifies document processing by parsing diverse formats and providing integrations with the generative AI ecosystem. From 2.13.0 until 2.74.0, the USPTO patent XML parser used the standard xml.sax.parseString() without protection against XML External Entity (XXE) attacks. An attacker could craft malicious USPTO patent XML files with external entity references that could read arbitrary files from the server filesystem, perform Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attacks, or cause denial of service through entity expansion (Billion Laughs attack). The vulnerability affects three USPTO patent format parsers: ICE (v4.x), Grant v2.5, and Application v1.x. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.74.0.

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 docling-project
Product docling
Versions
  • Version >= 2.13.0, < 2.74.0 is affected

References

Problem Types

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