Shibboleth XML parser - issues with parsing dash character

[Cantor, Scott]

> A SAML trace provided by the external IDP identified that the problematic
> users had a SAML token that contained an endash character ‘–‘ (Unicode Hex
> 'x96') in one of the attributes of the SAML token.

I'm not aware of that being an invalid character in the abstract, but the specific encoding used may have been invalid UTF-8.

> Is there a configuration to enable the endash character to be correctly
> parsed? Or could this be an issue with the XML parser?

It is almost certainly an issue with the IdP. It's not impossible that Xerces has a bug, but in this case I am much more inclined to assume the XML is non-well-formed, unless it's supplied with evidence other XML parsers are handling it.

-- Scott