What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2024-45291: Path traversal and Server-Side Request Forgery in HTML writer when embedding images is enabled in PHPSpreadsheet
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2024-10-07 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-36
Description
PHPSpreadsheet is a pure PHP library for reading and writing spreadsheet files. It's possible for an attacker to construct an XLSX file that links images from arbitrary paths. When embedding images has been enabled in HTML writer with `$writer->setEmbedImages(true);` those files will be included in the output as `data:` URLs, regardless of the file's type. Also URLs can be used for embedding, resulting in a Server-Side Request Forgery vulnerability. When embedding images has been enabled, an attacker can read arbitrary files on the server and perform arbitrary HTTP GET requests. Note that any PHP protocol wrappers can be used, meaning that if for example the `expect://` wrapper is enabled, also remote code execution is possible. This issue has been addressed in release versions 1.29.2, 2.1.1, and 2.3.0. All users are advised to upgrade. there are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Affected products
- PHPOffice PhpSpreadsheet: before 1.29.2; from 2.0.0 before 2.1.1; from 2.2.0 before 2.3.0 — fixed in 1.29.2, 2.1.1, 2.3.0
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: PHPOffice PhpSpreadsheet 1.29.2, 2.1.1, 2.3.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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