What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2009-3294

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.0 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2009-09-22 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-134

Description

The popen API function in TSRM/tsrm_win32.c in PHP before 5.2.11 and 5.3.x before 5.3.1, when running on certain Windows operating systems, allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted (1) "e" or (2) "er" string in the second argument (aka mode), possibly related to the _fdopen function in the Microsoft C runtime library. NOTE: this might not cross privilege boundaries except in rare cases in which the mode argument is accessible to an attacker outside of an application that uses the popen function.

Affected products

• PHP: from 5.2.0 before 5.2.11; from 5.3.0 before 5.3.1 — fixed in 5.2.11, 5.3.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: PHP 5.2.11, 5.3.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=44683
• http://news.php.net/php.announce/79
• http://svn.php.net/viewvc?view=revision&revision=287779
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/09/20/1
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/11/20/2
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/11/20/3
• http://www.osvdb.org/58188
• http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php
• http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.2.11
• http://www.php.net/releases/5_2_11.php
• http://www.php.net/releases/5_3_1.php
• http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=44683

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