Description

SAP Process Integration (SOAP Adapter) allows a privileged user to send specially crafted requests containing deeply nested entity definitions, which under certain conditions could temporarily increase processor load and degrade system responsiveness. Successful exploitation results in low impact on availability with no impact on confidentiality and integrity.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "2.2",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-08T01:17:50.953Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-08T01:17:50.953Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability involves an XML External Entity (XXE)-related resource exhaustion flaw within the SAP Process Integration SOAP adapter.\nThe vulnerability is categorized as a Denial of Service (DoS) issue, specifically impacting system availability through processor resource consumption.\nThe flaw affects the SAP Process Integration component, specifically within the logic handling SOAP-based request processing.\nRisk implications are limited to temporary degradation of system responsiveness, with no compromise to the confidentiality or integrity of data stored within the SAP environment.\nExploitation requires the attacker to possess privileged user access to the SAP landscape, as the system does not allow unauthenticated or low-privileged actors to trigger this specific vector.\nThe attack is characterized by the delivery of a maliciously crafted payload containing deeply nested entity definitions designed to maximize parsing complexity.\nSuccessful execution imposes a high computational load on the application server during the parsing phase, resulting in transient performance degradation for legitimate services.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability lies in the improper management of XML parsing logic when handling SOAP requests containing complex, deeply nested Document Type Definition (DTD) entities.\nWhen the SAP Process Integration SOAP adapter receives an incoming request, the XML parser attempts to expand all defined entities within the XML document before processing the request body.\nAn authenticated user with sufficient privileges can craft a payload leveraging nested entity expansion, a technique often referred to as an 'XML Bomb' or 'Billion Laughs' attack.\nBy constructing an XML document where entities are defined such that they refer to one another in an exponentially increasing manner, the parser is forced to allocate significant memory and CPU cycles to resolve the full extent of the entity tree.\nThe attack flow proceeds as follows: First, the privileged attacker identifies the SOAP endpoint. Second, the attacker submits a specially crafted XML document via the SOAP adapter containing the deeply nested structure. Third, the internal XML parser of the SOAP adapter initiates the recursive expansion of these entities. Fourth, the exhaustion of processor resources occurs as the parser struggles to compute the expanded state of the document, leading to an increase in CPU utilization.\nBecause the parsing operation happens synchronously before the business logic is executed, the entire processing thread for that request remains occupied, and the cumulative effect of multiple such requests leads to degraded responsiveness for other system operations.\nThe component responsible for this behavior is the XML parsing engine utilized by the SOAP adapter. As the expansion occurs during the initial ingestion phase, the application server is unable to reject the request until after significant computational work has been performed.\nThe scope of the impact is strictly limited to availability. There is no evidence suggesting that this vulnerability facilitates arbitrary code execution, unauthorized data access, or the bypassing of security controls (confidentiality and integrity).\nGiven that the vector requires privileged access, the attack is largely contained to malicious internal actors or compromised accounts possessing the requisite permissions to submit requests to the integration layer."
}