GHSA-jrfj-fhj2-jjvm
Excelize: Unbounded spinCount in agile decryption burns CPU during OpenFile
Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/xuri/excelize/v2 | >= 2.3.1, < 2.11.1-0.20260906004932-2badfcd5841d | 2.11.1-0.20260906004932-2badfcd5841d |
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
Opening a file whose first eight bytes are the OLE magic number sends excelize down the decryption path whether or not the caller set a password, or supports encrypted workbooks at all. `openReaderAt` (excelize.go:198-215) branches on the header alone, and `agileDecrypt` calls `convertPasswdToKey` before the verifier hash is checked, so the key-derivation loop runs `spinCount` times regardless.
`spinCount` (crypt.go:98) is a plain `int` filled by a bare `xml.Unmarshal` of the file's own EncryptionInfo stream. Nothing bounds it.
A 3072-byte file with spinCount 100000000 makes `OpenFile` take 58.65s on v2.11.0 with default options, then return `zip: not a valid zip file`. It is linear at about 0.6 microseconds per iteration and the attacker picks the number, so 1e9 is roughly ten minutes. Nothing on the path takes a `context.Context`, so the caller cannot cancel it; in an HTTP handler the write timeout returns a response while the goroutine keeps spinning. Memory stays flat at 24 MB, so nothing reclaims it either.
```
v2.5.0 spinCount=10000000 5.307s
v2.9.1 spinCount=10000000 5.444s
v2.11.0 spinCount=10000000 7.529s
v2.11.0 spinCount=100000000 58.654s
```
The loop arrived with `crypt.go` in v2.3.1 and is unchanged through v2.11.0.
Excel and LibreOffice write spinCount 100000, which costs 61ms here, so a ceiling well above the legitimate value would cost real files nothing.
This is availability only, and it is not a vulnerability for a program that only opens files its own operator produced.
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.