CVE-2014-3004

The default configuration for the Xerces SAX Parser in Castor before 1.3.3 allows context-dependent attackers to conduct XML External Entity (XXE) attacks via a crafted XML document.

This issue affects the version of castor as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this issue as having Moderate security impact. A future update may address this issue. For additional information, refer to the Issue Severity Classification: https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/.

Red Hat JBoss SOA Platform 4 is now in Phase 3, Extended Life Support, of its life cycle. This issue has been rated as having Moderate security impact and is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates. For additional information, refer to the Red Hat JBoss Middleware and Red Hat JBoss Operations Network Product Update and Support Policy: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/jboss_notes/

Fuse ESB Enterprise 7 is now in Maintenance Support phase receiving only qualified Important and Critical impact security fixes. This issue has been rated as having Moderate security impact and is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates. For additional information, refer to the Fuse Product Life Cycle: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/fusesource/

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

"A configuration file in the Java library directory (e.g. /jdk1.2/lib) can be used to override the default configuration file with system-wide properties. In addition, a configuration file can be placed in the classpath and will override both the system wide properties and Castor-default configuration." [1]

Adding the following content in any of the above mentioned configuration files will act as a viable mitigation against this flaw.

org.exolab.castor.sax.features=
http://apache.org/xml/features/disallow-doctype-decl

org.exolab.castor.sax.features-to-disable=
http://xml.org/sax/features/external-general-entities,
http://xml.org/sax/features/external-parameter-entities,
http://apache.org/xml/features/nonvalidating/load-external-dtd

Note that using this configuration after upgrading to a version of Castor containing a fix for this issue might override any future hardening or changes to default behavior.

[1] http://castor.codehaus.org/conf-lib.html