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Not in CISA KEV
HIGH severity

CVE-2023-27476 — owslib

HIGHFix: geopython/OWSLib#863

CVE-2023-27476 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.2) XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability in owslib. A fix is available for owslib — see the affected versions and patch details below.

XML External Entity (XXE) Injection in OWSLib

Also known asGHSA-8h9c-r582-mggcPYSEC-2023-86
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Nov 5, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

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-2023-27476.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
1.0%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs62th percentile — riskier than 62% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.49%0.99%1.48%0.2%1.0%May 26Sep 26Nov 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

Where this sits among everything scored

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
🐍owslib

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

OWSLib is a Python package for client programming with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web service interface standards, and their related content models. OWSLib's XML parser (which supports both lxml and xml.etree) does not disable entity resolution, and could lead to arbitrary file reads from an attacker-controlled XML payload. This affects all XML parsing in the codebase. This issue has been addressed in version 0.28.1. All users are advised to upgrade. The only known workaround is to patch the library manually. See GHSA-8h9c-r582-mggc for details.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐍PyPIowsliball versions0.28.1pip install --upgrade 'owslib==0.28.1'

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
owslibosgeo
< 0.28.1
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for owslib, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update owslib to 0.28.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-27476 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. 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.

Frequently Asked Questions

OWSLib is a Python package for client programming with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web service interface standards, and their related content models. OWSLib's XML parser (which supports both `lxml` and `xml.etree`) does not disable entity resolution, and could lead to arbitrary file reads from an attacker-controlled XML payload. This affects all XML parsing in the codebase. This issue has been addressed in version 0.28.1. All users are advised to upgrade. The only known workaround is to patch the library manually. See `GHSA-8h9c-r582-mggc` for details.
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2023-27476: owslib — Fixed in 0.28.1