CVE-2026-23836: HotCRP vulnerable to remote code execution through formulas

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-01-19 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

HotCRP is conference review software. A problem introduced in April 2024 in version 3.1 led to inadequately sanitized code generation for HotCRP formulas which allowed users to trigger the execution of arbitrary PHP code. The problem is patched in release version 3.2.

Affected products

kohler hotcrp: from 3.0 before 3.2 — fixed in 3.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: kohler hotcrp 3.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://github.com/kohler/hotcrp/commit/4674fcfbb76511072a1145dad620756fc1d4b4e9
https://github.com/kohler/hotcrp/commit/bfc7e0db15df6ed6d544a639020d2ce05a5f0834
https://github.com/kohler/hotcrp/security/advisories/GHSA-hpqh-j6qx-x57h

Get alerted when CVE-2026-23836 or the next vulnerability affects your stack