CVE-2012-2311

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 69.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2012-05-11 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-89

Description

sapi/cgi/cgi_main.c in PHP before 5.3.13 and 5.4.x before 5.4.3, when configured as a CGI script (aka php-cgi), does not properly handle query strings that contain a %3D sequence but no = (equals sign) character, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by placing command-line options in the query string, related to lack of skipping a certain php_getopt for the 'd' case. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2012-1823.

Affected products

PHP: through 5.3.12; 1.0, 2.0, 2.0b10, 3.0, 3.0.1, 3.0.2 (+111)

References

http://eindbazen.net/2012/05/php-cgi-advisory-cve-2012-1823/
http://lists.apple.com/archives/security-announce/2012/Sep/msg00004.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2012-05/msg00002.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2012-05/msg00007.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2012-05/msg00011.html
http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=134012830914727&w=2
http://secunia.com/advisories/49014
http://secunia.com/advisories/49085
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5501
http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2465
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/520827
http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.4.3

Get alerted when CVE-2012-2311 or the next vulnerability affects your stack