Use Safe Defaults for lxml Parsers

[pixeebot]

This codemod configures safe parameter values when initializing lxml.etree.XMLParser, lxml.etree.ETCompatXMLParser, lxml.etree.XMLTreeBuilder, or lxml.etree.XMLPullParser. If parameters resolve_entities, no_network, and dtd_validation are not set to safe values, your code may be vulnerable to entity expansion attacks and external entity (XXE) attacks.

Parameters no_network and dtd_validation have safe default values of True and False, respectively, so this codemod will set each to the default safe value if your code has assigned either to an unsafe value.

Parameter resolve_entities has an unsafe default value of True. This codemod will set resolve_entities=False if set to True or omitted.

The changes look as follows:

  import lxml.etree

- parser = lxml.etree.XMLParser()
- parser = lxml.etree.XMLParser(resolve_entities=True)
- parser = lxml.etree.XMLParser(resolve_entities=True, no_network=False, dtd_validation=True)
+ parser = lxml.etree.XMLParser(resolve_entities=False)
+ parser = lxml.etree.XMLParser(resolve_entities=False)
+ parser = lxml.etree.XMLParser(resolve_entities=False, no_network=True, dtd_validation=False)

More reading

• https://lxml.de/apidoc/lxml.etree.html#lxml.etree.XMLParser
• https://owasp.org/www-community/vulnerabilities/XML_External_Entity_(XXE)_Processing
• https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/XML_External_Entity_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet.html

I have additional improvements ready for this repo! If you want to see them, leave the comment:

@pixeebot next

... and I will open a new PR right away!

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Feedback | Community | Docs | Codemod ID: pixee:python/safe-lxml-parser-defaults

[pixeebot]

I'm confident in this change, but I'm not a maintainer of this project. Do you see any reason not to merge it?

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[pixeebot]

Just a friendly ping to remind you about this change. If there are concerns about it, we'd love to hear about them!

[pixeebot]

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