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.
Blast Radius
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 | 1.29.4 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpoffice/phpspreadsheet | ≥ 2.0.0&&< 2.1.3 | 2.1.3 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpoffice/phpspreadsheet | ≥ 2.2.0&&< 2.3.2 | 2.3.2 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpoffice/phpspreadsheet | ≥ 3.3.0&&< 3.4.0 | 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. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
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 pinpoints whether CVE-2024-48917 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
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 detects CVE-2024-48917 across Packagist dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.