XXE billion laughs attack seems not to be mitigated as expected by the Sonar recommended solution to prevent XXE attacks

Question

XXE security threat is currently no. 4 in the OWASP top ten web application security threats list, so I would expect that the Java standard XML libraries would prevent such attacks. However, when I use the Validator class in a way recommended by Sonar, rule "XML parsers should not be vulnerable to XXE attacks (java:S2755)" (link to rule):

String xsd = "xxe.xsd";
String xml = "billionlaughs.xml";
StreamSource xsdStreamSource = new StreamSource(xsd);
StreamSource xmlStreamSource = new StreamSource(xml);

SchemaFactory schemaFactory = SchemaFactory.newInstance(XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI);
Schema schema = schemaFactory.newSchema(xsdStreamSource);
schemaFactory.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, "");
schemaFactory.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, "");
// validators will also inherit of these properties
Validator validator = schema.newValidator();

validator.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, "");   // Compliant
validator.setProperty(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_SCHEMA, "");   // Compliant

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
validator.validate(xmlStreamSource, new StreamResult(writer));

with Java 11, with billionlaughs.xml being

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE lolz [
<!ENTITY lol "lol">
<!ENTITY lol2 "&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;">
<!ENTITY lol3 "&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;">
<!ENTITY lol4 "&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;">
<!ENTITY lol5 "&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;">
<!ENTITY lol6 "&lol5;&lol5;&lol5;&lol5;&lol5;&lol5;&lol5;&lol5;&lol5;&lol5;">
<!ENTITY lol7 "&lol6;&lol6;&lol6;&lol6;&lol6;&lol6;&lol6;&lol6;&lol6;&lol6;">
<!ENTITY lol8 "&lol7;&lol7;&lol7;&lol7;&lol7;&lol7;&lol7;&lol7;&lol7;&lol7;">
<!ENTITY lol9 "&lol8;&lol8;&lol8;&lol8;&lol8;&lol8;&lol8;&lol8;&lol8;&lol8;">
]>
<lolz>&lol9;</lolz>

I get the following exception:

Exception in thread "main" org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; lineNumber: 1; columnNumber: 1; JAXP00010001: The parser has encountered more than "64000" entity expansions in this document; this is the limit imposed by the JDK.
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:204)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.fatalError(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:178)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:400)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:327)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:284)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLEntityManager.startEntity(XMLEntityManager.java:1413)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLEntityManager.startEntity(XMLEntityManager.java:1337)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanEntityReference(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:1842)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDriver.next(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:2982)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:605)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.java:112)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:534)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:888)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:824)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.validation.StreamValidatorHelper.validate(StreamValidatorHelper.java:176)
    at java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.validation.ValidatorImpl.validate(ValidatorImpl.java:115)
    at trial.Trial.main(Trial.java:35)

So my question is whether this is considered the correct way to mitigate the billion laughs attack (after all, there is a limit of 64000 entity expansions), or is there maybe another way to configure the XML parsing to simply avoid looking at the <!DOCTYPE ..> section.

Answer 1

Both the OWASP Top Ten entry and the SonarSource rule are about XML External Entities, while the "Billion Laughs" attack is constructed using XML Internal Entities. Internal Entities are defined as:

[...] There is no separate physical storage object, and the content of the entity is given in the declaration.

Java has since at least Java 1.5 the entity expansion limit you are experiencing.

However, the recommended mitigation is required nonetheless to protect against XML External Entity attacks. You can test this yourself by using one of the examples provided on the OWASP site or in the SonarSource rule. For example let your Validator validate the following (assuming your OS is Linux):

<!DOCTYPE foo [
<!ELEMENT foo ANY >
<!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "file:///etc/passwd" >]>
<foo>&xxe;</foo>

And then let your code output the value of your StringWriter writer afterwards. You will see that, without the mitigation, it contains the content of the /etc/passwd file.

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As described by the OWASP XML External Entity Prevention Cheat Sheet you can in some cases also completely disable DTDs (Document Type Definition) to disallow both external and internal entities.