CVE-2026-44020 Docling: Unsafe XML Entity Expansion in USPTO Patent Backend
Attackers can exploit unsafe XML parsing in Docling to read server files, trigger SSRF, or cause denial of service via malicious patent XML files.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-44020?
CVE-2026-44020 is a high-severity vulnerability in docling-project docling, published on 24 Jun 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
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.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-44020?
3 open source packages ship an affected version, including docling. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
docling PyPI | From 2.13.0 | 2.74.0 |
docling PyPI | From 2.13.0 | 2.74.0 |
docling PyPI | From 2.13.0 | 2.74.0 |
Products include Docling Docling.
How do I fix CVE-2026-44020?
Upgrade docling to 2.74.0 or later.
Is CVE-2026-44020 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-44020 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in docling-project docling
- CVE-2026-44016 Docling: Unsafe Playwright-based HTML Rendering
- CVE-2026-105744 Docling has arbitrary file read/write (and command execution when shell-escape is enabled) when rendering untrusted TikZ with the opt-in Tectonic engine
- CVE-2026-44017 Docling: Unsafe Zip Extraction in EasyOCR Model Download
- CVE-2026-47214 Docling: Unsafe URI and Path Handling in HTML Backend
- CVE-2026-105751 Docling: Arbitrary local file read via draw:image xlink:href in the OpenDocument backend
Sources
Also known as GHSA-m88r-rg27-5xfg, PYSEC-2026-240.