Description

Detects potential XML External Entity (XXE) Injection vulnerabilities in Java applications by identifying unsafe XML parser usage. XXE vulnerabilities can allow attackers to read sensitive files, conduct denial of service attacks, or perform server-side request forgery through maliciously crafted XML input.

Detection Strategy

• Identifies Java code that uses XML parsers through 'parse' method calls

• Checks if the XML parser object is one of the known vulnerable parser types

• Verifies that no security settings or sanitization have been applied to the parser object

• Reports a vulnerability when an XML parser is used without proper security configuration to prevent XXE attacks

Vulnerable code example

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import java.io.StringReader;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;

public class XxeVulnerable {
    public void parseXml(String inputXml) {
        try {...

✅ Secure code example

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import java.io.StringReader;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import javax.xml.XMLConstants;

public class XxeSecure {
    public void parseXml(String inputXml) {...