XXE attacks
XXE attacks take advantage of the fact that XML libraries allow for these external references for DTDs or entities. Developers may not be aware of this potential attack vector and XML input is sometimes left unsanitized. As attackers communicating with an API, for example, we can intercept SOAP XML requests and inject our own XML elements in the payload. The server-side component must parse this payload in order to know what to do with the data. If the parser is not properly configured and it allows external entities, we can abuse the server to read files on the system, perform SSRF attacks, perform DoS attacks, and in some cases even execute code.
A billion laughs
The billion laughs attack, also known as an XML bomb, is a DoS attack that aims to overload the XML parser by causing it to allocate more memory than it has available with a relatively small input buffer. On older systems, or virtual machines with limited memory, a parser bomb could quickly crash the application or even...
