Golang XML External Entities Guide: Examples and Prevention

XML External Entity (XXE) attacks are a form of injection attack that exploit vulnerabilities in applications through malicious XML documents, leading to potential denial of service, data breaches, or service outages. These attacks can take various forms, such as file retrieval attacks, network snooping attacks, denial of service attacks using files like /dev/random, and XML bombs like the billion laughs attack, which overload systems by nesting entities. Golang demonstrates a robust defense against these attacks as its XML decoder does not process external entities, preventing the execution of malicious operations. Despite this built-in resilience, the article encourages further security measures to protect Go applications, emphasizing the importance of continual vigilance against potential vulnerabilities.