CVE-2025-66516 Exploit Fix & Mitigation Guide

Vulnerability Summary

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.

Why is this Critical?

This vulnerability allows attackers to bypass security boundaries. If successfully exploited, malicious actors could gain unauthorized access to sensitive data, execute arbitrary code, or disrupt critical services. For enterprise environments, this poses a severe risk of data breaches and compliance violations (GDPR/HIPAA).

Security Best Practices

• Patch Management: Automate security updates to reduce the exposure window.
• Network Segmentation: Isolate critical services to prevent lateral movement.
• Traffic Monitoring: Use intrusion detection systems to spot exploitation attempts.