How to protect against billion laugh attack in SVG that uses xlink in PHP or javascript?

Question

I want to protect my site against billion laugh attack. the code of the SVG image that makes the attack is:

<svg version="1.2" baseProfile="tiny" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" x="0px" y="0px" xml:space="preserve">
<path id="a" d="M0,0"/>
<g id="b"><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/><use xlink:href="#a"/></g>
<g id="c"><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/><use xlink:href="#b"/></g>
<g id="d"><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/><use xlink:href="#c"/></g>
<g id="e"><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/><use xlink:href="#d"/></g>
<g id="f"><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/><use xlink:href="#e"/></g>
<g id="g"><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/><use xlink:href="#f"/></g>
<g id="h"><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/><use xlink:href="#g"/></g>
<g id="i"><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/><use xlink:href="#h"/></g>
<g id="j"><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/><use xlink:href="#i"/></g>
</svg>

I need to find a PHP or a javascript solution that protects the site against this without the prevention of the SVG file upload. the image is embedded in my website in img tag

Answer 1

Because this attack works by consuming a large amount of memory, you should try processing the SVG in a separate process that has a strict memory limit. If the memory of the process is exhausted then you know the SVG is bad.

You can set the memory limit of a single PHP process during runtime with:

ini_set('memory_limit','16M');

This would set the memory limit of the process to 16M.