Title: CVE-2014-3529, CVE-2014-3574: Recommendation to update Apache POI in Apache Solr 4.8.0, 4.8.1, and 4.9.0 installations category: solr/security URL: save_as: slug: solr-security-security-recommendation-to-update-apache-poi-in-apache-solr-480-481-and-490-installations cve: CVE-2014-3529

Apache Solr versions 4.8.0, 4.8.1, 4.9.0 bundle Apache POI 3.10-beta2 with its binary release tarball. This version (and all previous ones) of Apache POI are vulnerable to the following issues:

CVE-2014-3529: XML External Entity (XXE) problem in Apache POI's OpenXML parser

Information disclosure: Apache POI uses Java's XML components to parse OpenXML files produced by Microsoft Office products (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX,...). Applications that accept such files from end-users are vulnerable to XML External Entity (XXE) attacks, which allows remote attackers to bypass security restrictions and read arbitrary files via a crafted OpenXML document that provides an XML external entity declaration in conjunction with an entity reference.

CVE-2014-3574: XML Entity Expansion (XEE) problem in Apache POI's OpenXML parser

Denial of service: Apache POI uses Java's XML components and Apache Xmlbeans to parse OpenXML files produced by Microsoft Office products (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX,...). Applications that accept such files from end-users are vulnerable to XML Entity Expansion (XEE) attacks (“XML bombs”), which allows remote hackers to consume large amounts of CPU resources.

The Apache POI PMC released a bugfix version (3.10.1) today.

Solr users are affected by these issues, if they enable the “Apache Solr Content Extraction Library (Solr Cell)” contrib module from the folder “contrib/extraction” of the release tarball.

Users of Apache Solr are strongly advised to keep the module disabled if they don't use it. Alternatively, users of Apache Solr 4.8.0, 4.8.1, or 4.9.0 can update the affected libraries by replacing the vulnerable JAR files in the distribution folder. Users of previous versions have to update their Solr release first, patching older versions is impossible.

To replace the vulnerable JAR files follow these steps:

  • Download the Apache POI 3.10.1 binary release.

  • Unzip the archive.

  • Delete the following files in your “solr-4.X.X/contrib/extraction/lib” folder:

    • poi-3.10-beta2.jar
    • poi-ooxml-3.10-beta2.jar
    • poi-ooxml-schemas-3.10-beta2.jar
    • poi-scratchpad-3.10-beta2.jar
    • xmlbeans-2.3.0.jar

  • Copy the following files from the base folder of the Apache POI distribution to the “solr-4.X.X/contrib/extraction/lib” folder:

    • poi-3.10.1-20140818.jar
    • poi-ooxml-3.10.1-20140818.jar
    • poi-ooxml-schemas-3.10.1-20140818.jar
    • poi-scratchpad-3.10.1-20140818.jar

  • Copy “xmlbeans-2.6.0.jar” from POI's “ooxml-lib/” folder to the “solr-4.X.X/contrib/extraction/lib” folder.

  • Verify that the “solr-4.X.X/contrib/extraction/lib” no longer contains any files with version number “3.10-beta2”.

  • Verify that the folder contains one xmlbeans JAR file with version 2.6.0.

If you just want to disable extraction of Microsoft Office documents, delete the files above and don't replace them. “Solr Cell” will automatically detect this and disable Microsoft Office document extraction.

Coming versions of Apache Solr will have the updated libraries bundled.