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UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2024-48917

The `XmlScanner` class has a scan method which should prevent XXE attacks.

HIGH 7.5EPSS 0.73%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.73%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

PhpSpreadsheet is a PHP library for reading and writing spreadsheet files. The `XmlScanner` class has a scan method which should prevent XXE attacks. However, in a bypass of the previously reported `CVE-2024-47873`, the regexes from the `findCharSet` method, which is used for determining the current encoding can be bypassed by using a payload in the encoding UTF-7, and adding at end of the file a comment with the value `encoding="UTF-8"` with `"`, which is matched by the first regex, so that `encoding='UTF-7'` with single quotes `'` in the XML header is not matched by the second regex. An attacker can bypass the sanitizer and achieve an XML external entity attack. Versions 1.9.4, 2.1.3, 2.3.2, and 3.4.0 fix the issue.

CVSS 3.1
7.5 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
EPSS
0.73% probability · 54th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-611
Affected
phpoffice/phpspreadsheet
Source
security-advisories@github.com
EPSS trend
0%3%5%26 October 2026: 0.73%26 October 202626 October 2026

EPSS 0.7% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.