CVE-2023-28118
Kaml Project Kaml ≤ 0.53.0
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2023-28118 is a high-severity XML Entity Expansion (CWE-776) vulnerability in Kaml Project Kaml. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique NTDS (T1003.003); ranked in the top 39% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-0975
Vulnerability Data
kaml provides YAML support for kotlinx.serialization. Prior to version 0.53.0, applications that use kaml to parse untrusted input containing anchors and aliases may consume excessive memory and crash. Version 0.53.0 and later default to refusing to parse YAML documents containing…
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anchors and aliases. There are no known workarounds.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Identifying and recording vulnerabilities can discover XML entity expansion flaws before exploitation.
Hardened configuration baselines can disable or limit DTD entity expansion in XML parsers.
Secure SDLC practices directly prevent introduction of improper recursive entity handling in XML code.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC mandates input validation and parser hardening that can prevent unbounded entity expansion.
Application security requirements can explicitly call for limits on XML entity recursion and DTD processing.
A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles (defense-in-depth, least privilege, distrust external input, fail securely, hardening, design review against attack patterns) that reach some but not most instances of unsafe DTD entity expansion; the dominant fix is explicit parser configuration or entity limits, which the clause names only as one possible output of its broader process.
Secure coding standards directly require disabling or restricting recursive entity references in XML parsers.
Security testing can detect and block XML entity-expansion vulnerabilities before deployment.