# CVE-2025-30220: GeoServer - XXE

> Live exploitation tracking for CVE-2025-30220 by the CrowdSec Live Exploit Tracker, built from real-world attack data crowdsourced from CrowdSec's global network.

Page: https://tracker.crowdsec.net/cves/CVE-2025-30220

## Key facts

- **Exploitation phase:** Limited Exploitation. The vulnerability is known but shows very limited attacker interest or exploitation activity.
- **CVSS score:** 9.9
- **Public exploit available:** Yes
- **Affected products:** GeoServer
- **Weaknesses:** CWE-611 (Improper Restriction of XML External Entity Reference); CWE-918 (Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF))
- **Tags:** web_application

## Description

GeoServer is an open source server that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. GeoTools Schema class use of Eclipse XSD library to represent schema data structure is vulnerable to XML External Entity (XXE) exploit. This impacts whoever exposes XML processing with gt-xsd-core involved in parsing, when the documents carry a reference to an external XML schema. The gt-xsd-core Schemas class is not using the EntityResolver provided by the ParserHandler (if any was configured). This also impacts users of gt-wfs-ng DataStore where the ENTITY_RESOLVER connection parameter was not being used as intended. This vulnerability is fixed in GeoTools 33.1, 32.3, 31.7, and 28.6.1, GeoServer 2.27.1, 2.26.3, and 2.25.7, and GeoNetwork 4.4.8 and 4.2.13.

## CrowdSec analysis

[CVE-2025-30220](https://euvd.enisa.europa.eu/vulnerability/CVE-2025-30220) is a critical XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability in GeoServer, stemming from improper handling of external XML schemas in the GeoTools Schema class and related components. This flaw allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to exploit XML parsing to access sensitive files, exfiltrate data, or potentially perform limited denial-of-service or server-side request forgery (SSRF) attacks.

CrowdSec has been tracking this vulnerability and its exploits since 17th of September 2025.

Insights from the CrowdSec network reveal that the attackers trying to exploit CVE-2025-30220 are composed of a fairly even mix of opportunistic and targeted actors. Some attackers employ preliminary reconnaissance, while others use indiscriminate scanning.
CrowdSec network telemetry also shows that exploitation of CVE-2025-30220 has significantly declined over the past week. Attack volumes are well below the long-term average, suggesting attackers are rapidly losing interest. The vulnerability appears to be falling out of active use across most threat landscapes.

Attackers exploit this vulnerability by sending specially crafted XML payloads to GeoServer WFS endpoints such as `/geoserver/wfs`, `/geoserver/ows`, `/wfs`, or `/ows`, attempting to trigger XXE processing and exfiltrate data or perform SSRF.

## Timeline

- 2025-06-10: CVE Published. CVE-2025-30220 is published to NVD.
- 2025-09-17: Rule Released. CrowdSec releases a rule to detect CVE-2025-30220 exploitation attempts against the CrowdSec Network.
- 2025-09-19: CrowdSec First Seen. CrowdSec observes in-the-wild exploitation of CVE-2025-30220 for the first time.

## References

- https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/security/advisories/GHSA-2p76-gc46-5fvc
- https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/8803
- https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/8812
- https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/pull/8757
- https://github.com/geotools/geotools/security/advisories/GHSA-826p-4gcg-35vw
- https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/security/advisories/GHSA-jj54-8f66-c5pc
- https://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/production/config.html#production-config-external-entities
- https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/blob/main/http/cves/2025/CVE-2025-30220.yaml

## Live exploitation data

The [Live Exploit Tracker page](https://tracker.crowdsec.net/cves/CVE-2025-30220) follows observed exploitation activity for CVE-2025-30220. [Request an API key](https://tracker.crowdsec.net/request-api-key) for full access to its exploitation timeline, attacking IP addresses and blocklists.