Impact This is a reintroduction of an earlier issue (CVE-2018-19296) by an unrelated bug fix in PHPMailer 6.1.8. An external file may be unexpectedly executable if it is used as a path to an attachment file via PHP's support for .phar files. Exploitation requires that an attacker is able to provide an unfiltered path to a file to attach, or to trick calling code into generating one. See this article for more info.
Patches This issue was patched in the PHPMailer 6.4.1 release. This release also implements stricter filtering for attachment paths; paths that look like any kind of URL are rejected.
Workarounds Validate paths to loaded files using the same pattern as used in isPermittedPath() before using them in any PHP file function, such as fileexists. This method can't be used directly because it is protected, but you can implement the same thing in calling code. Note that this should be applied to all user-supplied paths passed into such functions; it's not a problem specific to PHPMailer.
Credit This issue was found by Fariskhi Vidyan, reported and managed via Tidelift.
Impact The isMail transport in PHPMailer before 5.2.20 might allow remote attackers to pass extra parameters to the mail command and consequently execute arbitrary code by leveraging improper interaction between the escapeshellarg function and internal escaping performed in the mail function in PHP. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incorrect fix for CVE-2016-10033.
This issue really emphasises that it's worth avoiding the built-in PHP mail() function entirely.
Patches Fixed in 5.2.20
Workarounds Send via SMTP to localhost instead of calling the mail() function.
References https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-10045 See also https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-10033
For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: Open a private issue in the PHPMailer project
PHPMailer 6.4.1 contains a possible remote code execution vulnerability through the $langpath parameter of the setLanguage() method. If the $langpath parameter is passed unfiltered from user input, it can be set to a UNC path, and if an attacker is also able to create a remote mount on the server that the UNC path points to, a script file under their control may be executed.
Impact Arbitrary code may be run by a remote attacker under the web server or PHP process running on Window hosts.
Patches Mitigated in PHPMailer 6.5.0 by no longer treating translation files as PHP code, but by parsing their text content directly. This approach avoids the possibility of executing unknown code while retaining backward compatibility. This isn't ideal, so the current translation format is deprecated and will be replaced in the next major release.
Workarounds Any of: Ensure that calling code does not pass unfiltered user-supplied data to the $langpath parameter of the setLanguage() method. Block or filter the use of unknown UNC paths in this parameter (or altogether). Ensure that unauthorised users do not have the ability to read from unknown remote servers via UNC paths. Run on an OS that does not support UNC paths
References CVE-2021-34551.
Reported by listensec.com via Tidelift.
For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: Open an issue in PHPMailer Email the maintainers
Last updated 24 July 2024
Last updated 24 July 2024
Multiple CRLF injection vulnerabilities