0dd - The Zero (0) Day Division

The Zero (0) Day Division is a group of security professionals working towards a common goal; securing open-source projects.

KeePassDX XXE

The Issue

An XML External Entity attack is a type of attack against an application that parses XML input. This attack occurs when XML input containing a reference to an external entity is processed by a weakly configured XML parser. This attack may lead to the disclosure of confidential data, denial of service, server side request forgery, port scanning from the perspective of the machine where the parser is located, and other system impacts.

KeePassDX insecurely parses user-supplied XML content within the PwDatabaseV4.java file, allowing attackers to perform XXE attacks.

Where the Issue Occurred

Found on line 444 - 446 KeePassDX/app/src/main/java/com/kunzisoft/keepass/database/PwDatabaseV4.java#L444-446:

DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = db.parse(keyInputStream);

Disclosure Timeline

  • Issue Reported: 24th October 2018
  • Blog Post Published: 28th October 2018
  • Applied for CVE: