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Possible DoS via XPath Transform

High
tvdijen published GHSA-5cjr-mxj5-wmrx May 29, 2026

Package

composer simplesamlphp/saml2 (Composer)

Affected versions

4.20.2
4.19.2

Patched versions

4.20.3
4.19.3
composer simplesamlphp/saml2-legacy (Composer)
4.20.2
4.19.2
4.20.3
4.19.3

Description

Summary

This library turned out to be vulnerable to Denial-of-Service attacks using XPath transforms. A mitigation has been put in place to restrict the number of transforms and to restrict transforms to only the transform-algorithms mentioned in the SAML 2.0 Core Specifications (and specifically refuse XPath transforms).

Impact

An attacker is able to send specially crafted messages to any entity relying on SimpleSAMLphp (or directly on this SAML2-library) to be able to perform a Denial-of-Service attack.

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVE ID

CVE-2026-49289

Weaknesses

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits