GHSA-8r6m-32jq-jx6q — fast-xml-parser
Fix: NaturalIntelligence/fast-xml-parser@4e546e0GHSA-8r6m-32jq-jx6q is a CWE-776 vulnerability in fast-xml-parser. A fix is available for fast-xml-parser — see the affected versions and patch details below.
fast-xml-parser: Repeated DOCTYPE declarations reset entity expansion limits
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-8r6m-32jq-jx6q.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
fast-xml-parsernpmDescription
Impact
fast-xml-parser processes multiple "DOCTYPE" declarations within a single XML document. Each declaration passes its entities to @nodable/entities through addInputEntities().
addInputEntities() resets the entity expansion counters every time it is called. An attacker can therefore insert additional DOCTYPE declarations to repeatedly reset maxTotalExpansions and maxExpandedLength during one parse operation.
This allows a crafted XML document to exceed the configured entity-expansion limits and can cause excessive CPU use, event-loop blocking, memory exhaustion, and process termination.
Workarounds
- Manually check if multiple DOCTYPEs are not present in input contents
- Update to v5.10.1
- Keep
processEntityflag off
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | fast-xml-parser | ≥ 5.9.3&&< 5.10.1 | 5.10.1npm install fast-xml-parser@5.10.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for fast-xml-parser, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update fast-xml-parser to 5.10.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-8r6m-32jq-jx6q 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.
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.
This is an Important denial of service vulnerability affecting Red Hat products that process untrusted XML input using the `fast-xml-parser` library versions 5.9.3 through 5.10.0. A remote attacker could provide a specially crafted XML document with multiple DOCTYPE declarations, leading to excessive CPU usage, memory…
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-8r6m-32jq-jx6q (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.2 | ansible-automation-platform/bootc-automation-portal-rhel9:1788943531 | RHSA-2026:66003 |
| Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Applications 8.2 | mta/mta-ui-rhel9:1789446780 | RHSA-2026:67724 |
| Red Hat Openshift Data Foundation 4.22 | odf4/cephcsi-rhel9:1788162216 | RHSA-2026:65130 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-8r6m-32jq-jx6q in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.