Testing for XXE Injection Vulnerabilities
When to Use
- During authorized penetration tests when the application processes XML input (SOAP APIs, file uploads, RSS feeds)
- When testing APIs that accept
Content-Type: application/xmlortext/xml - For assessing XML parsers in file upload functionality (DOCX, XLSX, SVG, PDF)
- When evaluating SOAP-based web services for entity injection
- During security assessments of enterprise applications using XML configuration
Prerequisites
- Authorization: Written penetration testing agreement for the target
- Burp Suite Professional: For intercepting and modifying XML requests
- XXEinjector: Automated XXE exploitation tool (
git clone https://github.com/enjoiz/XXEinjector.git) - Out-of-band server: Burp Collaborator or interactsh for blind XXE detection
- curl: For manual payload crafting and submission
- Python: For building DTD hosting server
Workflow
Step 1: Identify XML Processing Points
Find all application endpoints that accept or process XML data.
# Look for XML content types in Burp proxy history
# Filter for: Content-Type: application/xml, text/xml, application/soap+xml
# Te…
