GHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m — poi
HIGHGHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-835 vulnerability in org.apache.poi:poi. EPSS puts its 30-day exploitation probability at 10.1% (95th percentile). A fix is available for org.apache.poi:poi — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Denial of Service in Apache POI
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 GHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m.
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
GHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m 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 10–50% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
org.apache.poi:poiReal-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
Apache POI in versions prior to release 3.17 are vulnerable to Denial of Service Attacks:
- Infinite Loops while parsing crafted WMF, EMF, MSG and macros (POI bugs 61338 and 61294)
- Out of Memory Exceptions while parsing crafted DOC, PPT and XLS (POI bugs 52372 and 61295)
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.apache.poi:poi | all versions | 3.17org.apache.poi:poi:3.17 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.apache.poi:poi, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.apache.poi:poi to 3.17 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m 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 GHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat JBoss A-MQ 6.3 | poi | RHSA-2018:1322 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-523c-xh4g-mh5m across Maven dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.