CVE-2023-26479 org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-rendering-parser vulnerable to Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions

What is CVE-2023-26479?

CVE-2023-26479 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Xwiki Xwiki, published on 2 Mar 2023. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

XWiki Platform is a generic wiki platform. Starting in version 6.0, users with write rights can insert well-formed content that is not handled well by the parser. As a consequence, some pages becomes unusable, including the user index (if the page containing the faulty content is a user page) and the page index.

Note that on the page, the normal UI is completely missing and it is not possible to open the editor directly to revert the change as the stack overflow is already triggered while getting the title of the document. This means that it is quite difficult to remove this content once inserted.

This has been patched in XWiki 13.10.10, 14.4.6, and 14.9-rc-1. A temporary workaround to avoid Stack Overflow errors is to increase the memory allocated to the stack by using the `-Xss` JVM parameter (e.g., `-Xss32m`). This should allow the parser to pass and to fix the faulty content. The consequences for other aspects of the system (e.g., performance) are unknown, and this workaround should be only be used as a temporary solution. The workaround does not prevent the issue occurring again with other content. Consequently, it is strongly advised to upgrade to a version where the issue has been patched.

Weakness: CWE-755

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-26479?

6 open source packages ship an affected version, including org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-rendering-parser. It affects 1 product.

Products include Xwiki Xwiki.

How do I fix CVE-2023-26479?

Upgrade org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-rendering-parser to a fixed version for your release line: 14.4.6, 14.9-rc-1 or 13.10.10.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2023-26479 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-26479 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Xwiki Xwiki

• CVE-2025-24893 XWiki Platform Eval Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-53836 XWiki Rendering is vulnerable to RCE attacks when processing nested macros Critical 10.0
• CVE-2024-55662 XWiki allows remote code execution through the extension sheet Critical 10.0
• CVE-2024-55877 XWiki allows remote code execution from account through macro descriptions and XWiki.XWikiSyntaxMacrosList Critical 10.0
• CVE-2024-37901 XWiki Platform vulnerable to remote code execution from account via SearchSuggestConfigSheet Critical 10.0

All Xwiki Xwiki vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-52vf-hvv3-98h7.