CVE-2023-50262

Dompdf possible DoS caused by infinite recursion when parsing SVG images

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: December 13, 2023 at 08:52 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 06:39 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorProject Dompdf

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 1%

Description

Dompdf is an HTML to PDF converter for PHP. When parsing SVG images Dompdf performs an initial validation to ensure that paths within the SVG are allowed. One of the validations is that the SVG document does not reference itself. However, prior to version 2.0.4, a recursive chained using two or more SVG documents is not correctly validated. Depending on the system configuration and attack pattern this could exhaust the memory available to the executing process and/or to the server itself. php-svg-lib, when run in isolation, does not support SVG references for `image` elements. However, when used in combination with Dompdf, php-svg-lib will process SVG images referenced by an `image` element. Dompdf currently includes validation to prevent self-referential `image` references, but a chained reference is not checked. A malicious actor may thus trigger infinite recursion by chaining references between two or more SVG images. When Dompdf parses a malicious payload, it will crash due after exceeding the allowed execution time or memory usage. An attacker sending multiple request to a system can potentially cause resource exhaustion to the point that the system is unable to handle incoming request. Version 2.0.4 contains a fix for this issue.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v ≤ 2.0.3
Affected range stops below 2.0.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

CVSS

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-20CWE-674

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