Testing for XML Injection Vulnerabilities

When to Use

• When testing applications that process XML input (SOAP APIs, XML-RPC, file uploads)
• During penetration testing of applications with XML parsers
• When assessing SAML-based authentication implementations
• When testing file import/export functionality that handles XML formats
• During API security testing of SOAP or XML-based web services

Prerequisites

• Burp Suite with XML-related extensions (Content Type Converter, XXE Scanner)
• XMLLint or similar XML validation tools
• Understanding of XML structure, DTDs, and entity processing
• Python 3.x with lxml and requests libraries
• Access to an out-of-band interaction server (Burp Collaborator, interact.sh)
• Sample XXE payloads from PayloadsAllTheThings repository

Workflow