What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-27230

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2021-03-15 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-94

Description

ExpressionEngine before 5.4.2 and 6.x before 6.0.3 allows PHP Code Injection by certain authenticated users who can leverage Translate::save() to write to an _lang.php file under the system/user/language directory.

Affected products

• ExpressionEngine: before 5.4.2; from 6.0.0 before 6.0.3 — fixed in 5.4.2, 6.0.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: ExpressionEngine 5.4.2, 6.0.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://karmainsecurity.com/KIS-2021-03
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/161805/ExpressionEngine-6.0.2-PHP-Code-Injection.html
• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2021/Mar/32
• https://expressionengine.com/features
• https://hackerone.com/reports/1093444
• http://karmainsecurity.com/KIS-2021-03
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/161805/ExpressionEngine-6.0.2-PHP-Code-Injection.html
• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2021/Mar/32
• https://expressionengine.com/features
• https://hackerone.com/reports/1093444

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