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⇱ CWE - CWE-643: Improper Neutralization of Data within XPath Expressions ('XPath Injection') (4.20)

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Home > CWE List > CWE-643: Improper Neutralization of Data within XPath Expressions ('XPath Injection') (4.20)  
CWE Glossary Definition
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CWE-643: Improper Neutralization of Data within XPath Expressions ('XPath Injection')

Weakness ID: 643
Vulnerability Mapping: ALLOWED This CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
Abstraction: Base Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.
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Description
The product uses external input to dynamically construct an XPath expression used to retrieve data from an XML database, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes that input. This allows an attacker to control the structure of the query.
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Extended Description
The net effect is that the attacker will have control over the information selected from the XML database and may use that ability to control application flow, modify logic, retrieve unauthorized data, or bypass important checks (e.g. authentication).
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Common Consequences
👁 Section Help
This table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.
Impact Details

Bypass Protection Mechanism

Scope: Access Control
Controlling application flow (e.g. bypassing authentication).

Read Application Data

Scope: Confidentiality
The attacker could read restricted XML content.
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Potential Mitigations
Phase(s) Mitigation

Implementation
Use parameterized XPath queries (e.g. using XQuery). This will help ensure separation between data plane and control plane.

Implementation
Properly validate user input. Reject data where appropriate, filter where appropriate and escape where appropriate. Make sure input that will be used in XPath queries is safe in that context.
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 Relationships
👁 Section Help
This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
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Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (View-1000)
Nature Type ID Name
ChildOf 👁 Base
Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource. 		91 XML Injection (aka Blind XPath Injection)
ChildOf 👁 Class
Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource. 		943 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Data Query Logic
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Relevant to the view "Architectural Concepts" (View-1008)
Nature Type ID Name
MemberOf 👁 Category
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 		1019 Validate Inputs
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Modes Of Introduction
👁 Section Help
The different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.
Phase Note
Implementation REALIZATION: This weakness is caused during implementation of an architectural security tactic.
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Applicable Platforms
👁 Section Help
This listing shows possible areas for which the given weakness could appear. These may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms, Technologies, or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given weakness appears for that instance.
Languages

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

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Likelihood Of Exploit
High
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Demonstrative Examples

Example 1


Consider the following simple XML document that stores authentication information and a snippet of Java code that uses XPath query to retrieve authentication information:

(informative)
Example Language: XML 
<users>
<user>
<login>john</login>
<password>abracadabra</password>
<home_dir>/home/john</home_dir>
</user>
<user>
<login>cbc</login>
<password>1mgr8</password>
<home_dir>/home/cbc</home_dir>
</user>
</users>

The Java code used to retrieve the home directory based on the provided credentials is:

(bad code)
Example Language: Java 
XPath xpath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
XPathExpression xlogin = xpath.compile("//users/user[login/text()='" + login.getUserName() + "' and password/text() = '" + login.getPassword() + "']/home_dir/text()");
Document d = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(new File("db.xml"));
String homedir = xlogin.evaluate(d);

Assume that user "john" wishes to leverage XPath Injection and login without a valid password. By providing a username "john" and password "' or ''='" the XPath expression now becomes

(attack code)
//users/user[login/text()='john' or ''='' and password/text() = '' or ''='']/home_dir/text()

This lets user "john" login without a valid password, thus bypassing authentication.



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Weakness Ordinalities
Ordinality Description
Primary
(where the weakness exists independent of other weaknesses)
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Detection Methods
Method Details

Automated Static Analysis
Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)

Effectiveness: High
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Memberships
👁 Section Help
This MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a weakness fits within the context of external information sources.
Nature Type ID Name
MemberOf 👁 Category
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.		 929 OWASP Top Ten 2013 Category A1 - Injection
MemberOf 👁 Category
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.		 990 SFP Secondary Cluster: Tainted Input to Command
MemberOf 👁 Category
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.		 1308 CISQ Quality Measures - Security
MemberOf 👁 View
View - a subset of CWE entries that provides a way of examining CWE content. The two main view structures are Slices (flat lists) and Graphs (containing relationships between entries).		 1340 CISQ Data Protection Measures
MemberOf 👁 Category
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.		 1347 OWASP Top Ten 2021 Category A03:2021 - Injection
MemberOf 👁 Category
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.		 1409 Comprehensive Categorization: Injection
MemberOf 👁 Category
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.		 1440 OWASP Top Ten 2025 Category A05:2025 - Injection
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Vulnerability Mapping Notes
Usage ALLOWED
(this CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities)
Reason Acceptable-Use

Rationale

This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.

Comments

Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.
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Notes

Relationship

This weakness is similar to other weaknesses that enable injection style attacks, such as SQL injection, command injection and LDAP injection. The main difference is that the target of attack here is the XML database.
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Taxonomy Mappings
Mapped Taxonomy Name Node ID Fit Mapped Node Name
WASC 39 XPath Injection
Software Fault Patterns SFP24 Tainted input to command
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References
[REF-531] Web Application Security Consortium. "XPath Injection".
<http://projects.webappsec.org/w/page/13247005/XPath%20Injection>. (URL validated: 2023-04-07)
[REF-62] Mark Dowd, John McDonald and Justin Schuh. "The Art of Software Security Assessment". Chapter 17, "XPath Injection", Page 1070. 1st Edition. Addison Wesley. 2006.
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Content History
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Submissions
Submission Date Submitter Organization
2008-01-30
(CWE Draft 8, 2008-01-30) 		Evgeny Lebanidze Cigital
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Modifications
Modification Date Modifier Organization
2025-12-11
(CWE 4.19, 2025-12-11) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships, Weakness_Ordinalities
2024-02-29
(CWE 4.14, 2024-02-29) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Demonstrative_Examples
2023-06-29
(CWE 4.12, 2023-06-29) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
2023-04-27
(CWE 4.11, 2023-04-27) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Detection_Factors, References, Relationships
2023-01-31
(CWE 4.10, 2023-01-31) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Description
2021-10-28
(CWE 4.6, 2021-10-28) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2020-12-10
(CWE 4.3, 2020-12-10) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2020-08-20
(CWE 4.2, 2020-08-20) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2020-02-24
(CWE 4.0, 2020-02-24) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2018-03-27
(CWE 3.1, 2018-03-27) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2017-11-08
(CWE 3.0, 2017-11-08) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Applicable_Platforms, Enabling_Factors_for_Exploitation, Modes_of_Introduction, Relationships
2014-07-30
(CWE 2.8, 2014-07-31) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2014-06-23
(CWE 2.7, 2014-06-23) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2012-10-30
(CWE 2.3, 2012-10-30) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Potential_Mitigations
2012-05-11
(CWE 2.2, 2012-05-15) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated References, Relationships
2011-06-01
(CWE 1.13, 2011-06-01) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences
2010-12-13
(CWE 1.11, 2010-12-13) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences
2010-06-21
(CWE 1.9, 2010-06-21) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Enabling_Factors_for_Exploitation
2010-04-05
(CWE 1.8.1, 2010-04-05) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Description, Name
2010-02-16
(CWE 1.8, 2010-02-16) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Taxonomy_Mappings
2009-10-29
(CWE 1.6, 2009-10-29) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences
2009-05-27
(CWE 1.4, 2009-05-27) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Name
2009-03-10
(CWE 1.3, 2009-03-10) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Demonstrative_Examples
2008-10-14
(CWE 1.0.1, 2008-10-14) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Description, Name, References, Relationship_Notes
2008-09-08
(CWE 1.0, 2008-09-09) 		CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences, Relationships
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Previous Entry Names
Change Date Previous Entry Name
2010-04-05 Failure to Sanitize Data within XPath Expressions ('XPath injection')
2009-05-27 Failure to Sanitize Data within XPath Expressions (aka 'XPath injection')
2008-10-14 Unsafe Treatment of XPath Input
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Page Last Updated: April 30, 2026

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