What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2012-4388

• Severity: medium (CVSS 4.3 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 4.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2012-09-07 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-20

Description

The sapi_header_op function in main/SAPI.c in PHP 5.4.0RC2 through 5.4.0 does not properly determine a pointer during checks for %0D sequences (aka carriage return characters), which allows remote attackers to bypass an HTTP response-splitting protection mechanism via a crafted URL, related to improper interaction between the PHP header function and certain browsers, as demonstrated by Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incorrect fix for CVE-2011-1398.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 8.04, 10.04, 11.04, 11.10, 12.04
• Debian Linux: 6.0
• PHP: from 5.3.0 before 5.3.11; 5.4.0-rc2 — fixed in 5.3.11

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: PHP 5.3.11. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.php.devel/70584
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2013-08/msg00006.html
• http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/08/29/5
• http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/02/1
• http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/05/15
• http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/07/3
• http://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2012-4388
• http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/branches/PHP_5_4/main/SAPI.c?r1=323986&r2=323985&pathrev=323986
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id?1027463
• http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1569-1
• https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=60227
• http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.php.devel/70584

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