CVE-2024-48917 — phpoffice/phpspreadsheet
HIGHCVE-2024-48917 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability in phpoffice/phpspreadsheet. A fix is available for phpoffice/phpspreadsheet — see the affected versions and patch details below.
XXE in PHPSpreadsheet's XLSX reader
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-2024-48917.
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-2024-48917 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 377,333 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
phpoffice/phpspreadsheet🐘phpoffice/phpspreadsheet🐘phpoffice/phpspreadsheet🐘phpoffice/phpspreadsheet🐘phpoffice/phpexcelReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
PhpSpreadsheet is a PHP library for reading and writing spreadsheet files. The XmlScanner class has a scan method which should prevent XXE attacks. However, in a bypass of the previously reported CVE-2024-47873, the regexes from the findCharSet method, which is used for determining the current encoding can be bypassed by using a payload in the encoding UTF-7, and adding at end of the file a comment with the value encoding="UTF-8" with ", which is matched by the first regex, so that encoding='UTF-7' with single quotes ' in the XML header is not matched by the second regex. An attacker can bypass the sanitizer and achieve an XML external entity attack. Versions 1.9.4, 2.1.3, 2.3.2, and 3.4.0 fix the issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | phpoffice/phpspreadsheet | all versions | 1.29.4composer require phpoffice/phpspreadsheet:^1.29.4 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpoffice/phpspreadsheet | ≥ 2.0.0&&< 2.1.3 | 2.1.3composer require phpoffice/phpspreadsheet:^2.1.3 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpoffice/phpspreadsheet | ≥ 2.2.0&&< 2.3.2 | 2.3.2composer require phpoffice/phpspreadsheet:^2.3.2 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpoffice/phpspreadsheet | ≥ 3.3.0&&< 3.4.0 | 3.4.0composer require phpoffice/phpspreadsheet:^3.4.0 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpoffice/phpexcel | all versions | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for phpoffice/phpspreadsheet, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update phpoffice/phpspreadsheet to 1.29.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-48917 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-2024-48917 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-48917. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-48917 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-48917 across Packagist dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.