CVE-2022-46751 — ivy
HIGHCVE-2022-46751 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.2) CWE-91 vulnerability in org.apache.ivy:ivy. A fix is available for org.apache.ivy:ivy — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Apache Ivy: XML External Entity vulnerability in Apache Ivy
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-46751.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-46751 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,166 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
org.apache.ivy:ivyReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference, XML Injection (aka Blind XPath Injection) vulnerability in Apache Software Foundation Apache Ivy.This issue affects any version of Apache Ivy prior to 2.5.2.
When Apache Ivy prior to 2.5.2 parses XML files - either its own configuration, Ivy files or Apache Maven POMs - it will allow downloading external document type definitions and expand any entity references contained therein when used.
This can be used to exfiltrate data, access resources only the machine running Ivy has access to or disturb the execution of Ivy in different ways.
Starting with Ivy 2.5.2 DTD processing is disabled by default except when parsing Maven POMs where the default is to allow DTD processing but only to include a DTD snippet shipping with Ivy that is needed to deal with existing Maven POMs that are not valid XML files but are nevertheless accepted by Maven. Access can be be made more lenient via newly introduced system properties where needed.
Users of Ivy prior to version 2.5.2 can use Java system properties to restrict processing of external DTDs, see the section about "JAXP Properties for External Access restrictions" inside Oracle's "Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) Security Guide".
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.apache.ivy:ivy | all versions | 2.5.2org.apache.ivy:ivy:2.5.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.apache.ivy:ivy, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.apache.ivy:ivy to 2.5.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-46751 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-46751 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-46751. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| MTA-6.2-RHEL-8 | mta/mta-rhel8-operator:6.2.2-3 | RHSA-2024:1027 |
| MTR 1.2.4 | apache-ivy | RHSA-2024:0720 |
| Red Hat AMQ Streams 2.6.0 | apache-ivy | RHSA-2023:7678 |
| RHINT Camel-Springboot 4.0.0 | apache-ivy | RHSA-2023:5441 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-46751 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-46751 across Maven dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.