CVE-2015-0254 XXE and RCE via XSL extension in JSTL XML tags Severity: Important Vendor: The Apache Software Foundation Versions Affected: Standard Taglibs 1.2.1 The unsupported 1.0.x and 1.1.x versions may also be affected. Description: When an application uses <x:parse> or <x:transform> tags to process untrusted XML documents, a request may utilize external entity references to access resources on the host system or utilize XSLT extensions that may allow remote execution. Mitigation: Users should upgrade to Apache Standard Taglibs 1.2.3 or later. This version uses JAXP’s FEATURE_SECURE_PROCESSING to restrict XML processing. Depending on the Java runtime version in use, additional configuration may be required: Java8: External entity access is automatically disabled if a SecurityManager is active. Java7: JAXP properties may need to be used to disable external access. See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jaxp/properties/properties.html Java6 and earlier: A new system property org.apache.taglibs.standard.xml.accessExternalEntity may be used to specify the protocols that can be used to access external entities. This defaults to “all†if no SecurityManager is present and to “†(thereby disabling access) if a SecurityManager is detected. Credit: David Jorm of IIX