CVE-2022-24828: Missing input validation can lead to command execution in composer

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2022-04-13 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

Composer is a dependency manager for the PHP programming language. Integrators using Composer code to call `VcsDriver::getFileContent` can have a code injection vulnerability if the user can control the `$file` or `$identifier` argument. This leads to a vulnerability on packagist.org for example where the composer.json's `readme` field can be used as a vector for injecting parameters into hg/Mercurial via the `$file` argument, or git via the `$identifier` argument if you allow arbitrary data there (Packagist does not, but maybe other integrators do). Composer itself should not be affected by the vulnerability as it does not call `getFileContent` with arbitrary data into `$file`/`$identifier`. To the best of our knowledge this was not abused, and the vulnerability has been patched on packagist.org and Private Packagist within a day of the vulnerability report.

Affected products

Fedoraproject Fedora: 34, 35, 36
composer: before 1.10.26; from 2.0.0 before 2.2.12; from 2.3.0 before 2.3.5 — fixed in 1.10.26, 2.2.12, 2.3.5
Tenable.sc: before 5.21.0 — fixed in 5.21.0
Packagist Composer/Composer: before 1.10.26; from 2.0 before 2.2.12; from 2.3 before 2.3.5; 1.0.0, 1.0.0-alpha1, 1.0.0-alpha10, 1.0.0-alpha11, 1.0.0-alpha2, 1.0.0-alpha3 (+143) — fixed in 1.10.26, 2.2.12, 2.3.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: composer 1.10.26, 2.2.12, 2.3.5; Tenable.sc 5.21.0; Packagist Composer/Composer 1.10.26, 2.2.12, 2.3.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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