CVE-2018-25282

Received Received - Intake

XML Entity Expansion DoS in Nmap 7.70 ZenMap Import

Publication date: 2026-04-26

Last updated on: 2026-04-26

Assigner: VulnCheck

Description

Nmap 7.70 contains a denial of service vulnerability that allows local attackers to crash the application by processing malicious XML files with exponential entity expansion. Attackers can create a crafted XML file with nested entity definitions and open it through ZenMap's scan import functionality to cause the program to consume excessive system resources and crash.

CVSS Scores

EPSS Scores

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Meta Information

Published

2026-04-26

Last Modified

2026-04-26

Generated

2026-07-06

AI Q&A

2026-04-27

EPSS Evaluated

2026-07-05

NVD

CVE-2018-25282

EUVD

EUVD-2018-21802

Affected Vendors & Products

Vendor	Product	Version / Range
insecure	xml	7.70

Helpful Resources

Exploitability

CWE

KEV

CWE ID	Description
CWE-674	The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack.

Attack-Flow Graph

Executive Summary

This vulnerability exists in Nmap 7.70 and is a denial of service issue. It allows local attackers to crash the application by processing malicious XML files that contain exponential entity expansion. Specifically, attackers can craft an XML file with nested entity definitions and open it using ZenMap's scan import functionality, causing the program to consume excessive system resources and ultimately crash.

Impact Analysis

The impact of this vulnerability is a denial of service condition. By exploiting the vulnerability, an attacker can cause the Nmap application to crash, leading to a loss of availability. This can disrupt normal operations that rely on Nmap or ZenMap for network scanning and analysis.

Mitigation Strategies

To mitigate this vulnerability, avoid opening or importing untrusted or malicious XML files with ZenMap's scan import functionality, as these files can contain crafted nested entity definitions that cause excessive resource consumption and crash the application.

Additionally, consider updating Nmap to a version that addresses this vulnerability once available, or restrict local access to the application to trusted users only.

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