xxe

xxe is a skill for Claude Code from ByamB4/find-cve-agent. It costs 29 tokens per session (1,027 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A security review for XML external entity injection, where an XML parser follows attacker-supplied references to read files or send network requests.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect XML endpoints, SOAP services, document imports, SVG handling, and code that parses untrusted XML.
Why use it?
It helps find unsafe XML parser settings that expose local files or internal services to untrusted input.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the find-cve-agent plugin — 21 skills, 7 commands, 5 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to inspect XML endpoints, SOAP services, document imports, SVG handling, and code that parses untrusted XML.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/byamb4/find-cve-agent/xxe
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add ByamB4/find-cve-agent --skill xxe
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ByamB4/find-cve-agent

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install find-cve-agent, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 21 skills, 7 commands, 5 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for xxe

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/byamb4/find-cve-agent/xxe/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/byamb4/find-cve-agent/xxe)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/byamb4/find-cve-agent/xxe"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/byamb4/find-cve-agent/xxe/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for xxe

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/byamb4/find-cve-agent/xxe"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/byamb4/find-cve-agent/xxe.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 29 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,027 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00029 $0.01027
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00513
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00205
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00103

Measured 10d ago against content hash 0eeb037c1297, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

xxe scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/xxe/SKILL.md · 134 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 134 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

XXE Detection

When to Use

Audit XML processing endpoints, SOAP services, document importers (DOCX/XLSX/SVG), and any code that parses XML from untrusted sources.

Key Distinction from Entity Expansion

  • XXE = EXTERNAL entities (file://, http://) -- reads files or makes HTTP requests
  • Entity expansion = INTERNAL entity recursion (Billion Laughs) -- memory exhaustion DoS

Both can exist in the same parser, but they are different vulnerabilities.

Process

Step 1: Find XML Parsers

# JavaScript
grep -rn "DOMParser\|XMLParser\|xml2js\|libxmljs\|xmldom\|sax\|saxes" .

# Python
grep -rn "xml\.etree\|lxml\|minidom\|xml\.sax\|defusedxml\|xmltodict" .

# Go
grep -rn "xml\.Decoder\|xml\.Unmarshal\|encoding/xml" .

# Java
grep -rn "DocumentBuilder\|SAXParser\|XMLReader\|TransformerFactory\|SchemaFactory" .

# PHP
grep -rn "simplexml\|DOMDocument\|XMLReader\|xml_parse" .

# Ruby
grep -rn "Nokogiri\|REXML\|Ox\|LibXML" .

Step 2: Check External Entity Configuration

grep -rn "FEATURE_SECURE_PROCESSING\|FEATURE_EXTERNAL_ENTITIES\|FEATURE_GENERAL_ENTITIES" .
grep -rn "resolve_entities\|external_entities\|load_external\|noent\|nonet" .
grep -rn "disallow-doctype-decl\|external-general-entities\|external-parameter-entities" .
grep -rn "XXE\|external.*entity\|doctype" .

Step 3: Check Default Safety

Most modern parsers are SAFE by default. Key exceptions:

Parser Default External Entities Safe?
xml.etree (Python) Enabled UNSAFE
xml.sax (Python) Enabled UNSAFE
lxml (Python) Disabled SAFE
defusedxml (Python) Disabled SAFE
encoding/xml (Go) No entity support SAFE
Nokogiri (Ruby) Disabled SAFE
REXML (Ruby) Enabled UNSAFE
libxml2 (C) Depends on flags CHECK
Java DocumentBuilder Enabled UNSAFE
PHP simplexml Depends on libxml2 config CHECK
PHP DOMDocument Depends on libxml2 config CHECK

Step 4: Verify User Input Reaches Parser

Read the full file on GitHub · 134 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 134 lines · 29 tokens per session scan A 0eeb037c1297

Subscribe to this mod's changes

xxe is a skill published in the GitHub repository ByamB4/find-cve-agent (48 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 29 tokens to every session and 1,027 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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