CVE-2007-3998

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.0 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2007-09-04 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

The wordwrap function in PHP 4 before 4.4.8, and PHP 5 before 5.2.4, does not properly use the breakcharlen variable, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (divide-by-zero error and application crash, or infinite loop) via certain arguments, as demonstrated by a 'chr(0), 0, ""' argument set.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 6.06, 6.10, 7.04, 7.10
Debian Linux: 3.1, 4.0
PHP: from 4.0.0 before 4.4.8; from 5.0.0 before 5.2.4 — fixed in 4.4.8, 5.2.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: PHP 4.4.8, 5.2.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2008-01/msg00006.html
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2007-0889.html
http://secunia.com/advisories/26642
http://secunia.com/advisories/26822
http://secunia.com/advisories/26838
http://secunia.com/advisories/26871
http://secunia.com/advisories/26895
http://secunia.com/advisories/26930
http://secunia.com/advisories/26967
http://secunia.com/advisories/27102
http://secunia.com/advisories/27377
http://secunia.com/advisories/27545

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