CVE-2025-66578
xmlseclibs is a library written in PHP for working with XML Encryption and Signatures. Versions 3.1.3 contain an authentication bypass vulnerability due to a flaw in the libxml2 canonicalization process during document transformation. When libxml2’s canonicalization is invoked on an invalid XML input, it may return an empty string rather than a canonicalized node. xmlseclibs then proceeds to compute the DigestValue over this empty string, treating it as if canonicalization succeeded. This issue is fixed in version 3.1.4. Workarounds include treating canonicalization failures (exceptions or nil/empty outputs) as fatal and aborting validation, and/or adding explicit checks to reject when canonicalize returns nil/empty or raises errors.
EPSS 0.03% · 9.7th percentile
Risk Scores
Affected Products
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| robrichards | xmlseclibs | < 3.1.4 |
| robrichards | xmlseclibs | 0 |
| xmlseclibs_project | xmlseclibs | 0 |
Timeline
- Dec 8, 2025 CVE Published
- Dec 9, 2025 CVE Updated
- Dec 9, 2025 EPSS Score
- Dec 13, 2025 EPSS Score
- Dec 17, 2025 EPSS Score
- Dec 22, 2025 EPSS Score
- Dec 26, 2025 EPSS Score
- Dec 30, 2025 EPSS Score
- Jan 3, 2026 EPSS Score
- Jan 7, 2026 EPSS Score
- Jan 12, 2026 EPSS Score
- Jan 16, 2026 EPSS Score
References
- https://github.com/robrichards/xmlseclibs/security/advisories/GHSA-c4cc-x928-vjw9 url
- https://github.com/robrichards/xmlseclibs/commit/69fd63080bc47a8d51bc101c30b7cb756862d1d6 url
- https://github.com/robrichards/xmlseclibs/blob/f4131320c6dcd460f1b0c67f16f8bf24ce4b5c3e/src/XMLSecurityDSig.php#L296 url
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-66578 advisory
- https://github.com/robrichards/xmlseclibs package
- https://support.zabbix.com/browse/ZBX-27458 advisory