XML Processing Modules¶
Source code:Lib/xml/
Python’s interfaces for processing XML are grouped in thexml package.
Warning
The XML modules are not secure against erroneous or maliciouslyconstructed data. If you need to parse untrusted orunauthenticated data see theXML vulnerabilities andThe defusedxml Package sections.
It is important to note that modules in thexml package require thatthere be at least one SAX-compliant XML parser available. The Expat parser isincluded with Python, so thexml.parsers.expat module will always beavailable.
The documentation for thexml.dom andxml.sax packages are thedefinition of the Python bindings for the DOM and SAX interfaces.
The XML handling submodules are:
xml.etree.ElementTree: the ElementTree API, a simple and lightweightXML processor
xml.dom: the DOM API definitionxml.dom.minidom: a minimal DOM implementationxml.dom.pulldom: support for building partial DOM trees
xml.sax: SAX2 base classes and convenience functionsxml.parsers.expat: the Expat parser binding
XML vulnerabilities¶
The XML processing modules are not secure against maliciously constructed data.An attacker can abuse XML features to carry out denial of service attacks,access local files, generate network connections to other machines, orcircumvent firewalls.
The following table gives an overview of the known attacks and whetherthe various modules are vulnerable to them.
kind | sax | etree | minidom | pulldom | xmlrpc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
billion laughs | Vulnerable (1) | Vulnerable (1) | Vulnerable (1) | Vulnerable (1) | Vulnerable (1) |
quadratic blowup | Vulnerable (1) | Vulnerable (1) | Vulnerable (1) | Vulnerable (1) | Vulnerable (1) |
external entity expansion | Safe (5) | Safe (2) | Safe (3) | Safe (5) | Safe (4) |
DTD retrieval | Safe (5) | Safe | Safe | Safe (5) | Safe |
decompression bomb | Safe | Safe | Safe | Safe | Vulnerable |
large tokens | Vulnerable (6) | Vulnerable (6) | Vulnerable (6) | Vulnerable (6) | Vulnerable (6) |
Expat 2.4.1 and newer is not vulnerable to the “billion laughs” and“quadratic blowup” vulnerabilities. Items still listed as vulnerable due topotential reliance on system-provided libraries. Check
pyexpat.EXPAT_VERSION.xml.etree.ElementTreedoesn’t expand external entities and raises aParseErrorwhen an entity occurs.xml.dom.minidomdoesn’t expand external entities and simply returnsthe unexpanded entity verbatim.xmlrpc.clientdoesn’t expand external entities and omits them.Since Python 3.7.1, external general entities are no longer processed bydefault.
Expat 2.6.0 and newer is not vulnerable to denial of servicethrough quadratic runtime caused by parsing large tokens.Items still listed as vulnerable due topotential reliance on system-provided libraries. Check
pyexpat.EXPAT_VERSION.
- billion laughs / exponential entity expansion
TheBillion Laughs attack – also known as exponential entity expansion –uses multiple levels of nested entities. Each entity refers to another entityseveral times, and the final entity definition contains a small string.The exponential expansion results in several gigabytes of text andconsumes lots of memory and CPU time.
- quadratic blowup entity expansion
A quadratic blowup attack is similar to aBillion Laughs attack; it abusesentity expansion, too. Instead of nested entities it repeats one large entitywith a couple of thousand chars over and over again. The attack isn’t asefficient as the exponential case but it avoids triggering parser countermeasuresthat forbid deeply nested entities.
- external entity expansion
Entity declarations can contain more than just text for replacement. They canalso point to external resources or local files. The XMLparser accesses the resource and embeds the content into the XML document.
- DTD retrieval
Some XML libraries like Python’s
xml.dom.pulldomretrieve document typedefinitions from remote or local locations. The feature has similarimplications as the external entity expansion issue.- decompression bomb
Decompression bombs (akaZIP bomb) apply to all XML librariesthat can parse compressed XML streams such as gzipped HTTP streams orLZMA-compressedfiles. For an attacker it can reduce the amount of transmitted data by threemagnitudes or more.
- large tokens
Expat needs to re-parse unfinished tokens; without the protectionintroduced in Expat 2.6.0, this can lead to quadratic runtime that canbe used to cause denial of service in the application parsing XML.The issue is known asCVE 2023-52425.
The documentation fordefusedxml on PyPI has further information aboutall known attack vectors with examples and references.
Thedefusedxml Package¶
defusedxml is a pure Python package with modified subclasses of all stdlibXML parsers that prevent any potentially malicious operation. Use of thispackage is recommended for any server code that parses untrusted XML data. Thepackage also ships with example exploits and extended documentation on moreXML exploits such as XPath injection.