VNX-776 – Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs ('XML Entity Expansion')

Overview

VNX-776 maps to CWE-776: Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs (‘XML Entity Expansion’). Detects source patterns associated with CWE-776 (Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs (‘XML Entity Expansion’)). Each finding should be manually reviewed for exploitability in context.

Severity: Medium | CWE: CWE-776 | Languages: python

Why This Matters

This weakness class (Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs (‘XML Entity Expansion’)) creates a concrete exploit surface: the rule searches for the concrete source-level patterns most commonly associated with CWE-776 and surfaces them for review. Each finding should be evaluated in context — the rule catches the pattern, not the context.

What Gets Flagged

// FLAGGED: contains 'xml.etree.ElementTree.parse(' pattern
xml.etree.ElementTree.parse(

Remediation

  1. Review each flagged line and determine whether the pattern represents a real instance of CWE-776 or a false positive.
  2. Replace the flagged construct with a documented safe alternative appropriate to your language and framework.
  3. For confirmed false positives, add a # vulnetix-ignore: VNX-776 comment on the line.
  4. Ensure equivalent test coverage exists to prevent regression.

References