CVE-2019-12331
PHPOffice PhpSpreadsheet before 1.8.0 has an XXE issue.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (1.35%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
PHPOffice PhpSpreadsheet before 1.8.0 has an XXE issue. The XmlScanner decodes the sheet1.xml from an .xlsx to utf-8 if something else than UTF-8 is declared in the header. This was a security measurement to prevent CVE-2018-19277 but the fix is not sufficient. By double-encoding the the xml payload to utf-7 it is possible to bypass the check for the string ‚<!ENTITY‘ and thus allowing for an xml external entity processing (XXE) attack.
- CVSS 3.1
- 8.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- EPSS
- 1.35% probability · 71th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-611
- Affected
- phpoffice/phpspreadsheet
- Source
- cve@mitre.org
EPSS 1.4% since 27 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- https://github.com/PHPOffice/PhpSpreadsheet/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#180---2019-07-01Third Party Advisory
- https://herolab.usd.de/security-advisories/usd-2019-0046/Exploit, Third Party Advisory
- https://github.com/PHPOffice/PhpSpreadsheet/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#180---2019-07-01Third Party Advisory
- https://herolab.usd.de/security-advisories/usd-2019-0046/Exploit, Third Party Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.