QID 38884

Date Published: 2022-11-29

QID 38884: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) Extensible Markup Language (XML) Parsing Vulnerability (79971)

PHP is a programming language originally designed for use in web-based applications with HTML content. PHP supports a wide variety of platforms and is used by numerous web-based software applications.

Certain XML parsing functions, like simplexml_load_file(), URL-decode the filename passed to them. If that filename contains URL-encoded NUL character, this may cause the function to interpret this as the end of the filename, thus interpreting the filename differently from what the user intended, which may lead it to reading a different file than intended.

Affected Versions:
PHP versions 7.3.x prior to 7.3.33
PHP versions 7.4.x prior to 7.4.26
PHP versions 8.0.x prior to 8.0.13

QID Detection Logic (Unauthenticated):
This QID checks the HTTP Server header to see if the server is running a vulnerable version of PHP.

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may affect the confidentiality of the targeted user.

  • CVSS V3 rated as Medium - 5.3 severity.
  • CVSS V2 rated as Medium - 5 severity.
  • Solution
    Customers are advised to upgrade to the latest version of PHP.
    For more information please refer to Sec Bug 79971.
    Vendor References

    CVEs related to QID 38884

    Software Advisories
    Advisory ID Software Component Link
    79971 URL Logo bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=79971
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