by Kastro
Paper/Archive/CVE-2026-44020

CVE-2026-44020

docling-project docling — Docling: Unsafe XML Entity Expansion in USPTO Patent Backend

EPSS 0.6%CVSS 9.4
critical.is priorityof 100
38
CVSS 9.4 (CNA)9.4 / 10 × 3028.2Not in CISA KEV+300.0EPSS percentile 48.8.488 × 209.8No public exploit+100.0SSVC exploitation: none+100.0
Description · from the CVE record

Docling simplifies document processing by parsing diverse formats and providing integrations with the generative AI ecosystem. From 2.13.0 until 2.74.0, the USPTO patent XML parser used the standard xml.sax.parseString() without protection against XML External Entity (XXE) attacks. An attacker could craft malicious USPTO patent XML files with external entity references that could read arbitrary files from the server filesystem, perform Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attacks, or cause denial of service through entity expansion (Billion Laughs attack). The vulnerability affects three USPTO patent format parsers: ICE (v4.x), Grant v2.5, and Application v1.x. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.74.0.

Affected

ProductAffectedFixed inSource
docling>= 2.13.0, < 2.74.0–CNA
Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.4see advisory1786612637redhat-SADP

Scores by source

redhat-SADP (CNA)9.4CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H
GitHub_M (CNA)7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CISA ADPSSVCExploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

References

refgithub.com/docling-project/docling/security/advisories/GHSA-m88r-rg27-5xfgrefaccess.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-44020refbugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2492456refsecurity.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-44020.jsonadvisoryaccess.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:60520