XML Entity Expansion Attack

By Anandhu Krishnan Anandhu Krishnan
Published on 14 May 2024
Vulnerability

Description

A Billion Laughs attack is an exponential entity expansion that can cripple parsers of markup languages like XML or YAML, leading to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Recommendation

To prevent this type of attack, you can limit the memory allocated per parser, allowing for potential document loss. Alternatively, treat entities symbolically and expand them on an as-needed basis.

Anandhu Krishnan
Written by
Anandhu Krishnan
Lead Engineer

Anandhu is an accomplished Senior Lead Engineer with a strong focus on back-end development. His expertise lies in architecting and optimizing the core of software applications to ensure they run smoothly and efficiently. With a meticulous attention to detail and a deep understanding of data management and server-side operations, Anandhu has been a driving force behind the success of various back-end projects.

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