Remote code execution vulnerability when run as CGI

PMASA-2016-54

Announcement-ID: PMASA-2016-54

Date: 2016-07-25

Updated: 2016-12-08

Summary

Remote code execution vulnerability when run as CGI

Description

A vulnerability was discovered where a user can execute a remote code execution attack against a server when phpMyAdmin is being run as a CGI application. Under certain server configurations, a user can pass a query string which is executed as a command-line argument by the file generator_plugin.sh.

Updated 2016-12-08: Added fix for prohibiting the execution altogether.

Severity

We consider this vulnerability to be critical.

Mitigation factor

The file /libraries/plugins/transformations/generator_plugin.sh may be removed. Under certain server configurations, it may be sufficient to remove execute permissions for this file.

Affected Versions

All 4.6.x versions (prior to 4.6.4), 4.4.x versions (prior to 4.4.15.8), and 4.0.x versions (prior to 4.0.10.17) are affected

Solution

Upgrade to phpMyAdmin 4.6.4, 4.4.15.8, 4.0.10.17, or newer, or apply patch listed below.

References

Thanks to Emanuel Bronshtein @e3amn2l for reporting this vulnerability.

Assigned CVE ids: CVE-2016-6631

CWE ids: CWE-661

Patches

The following commits have been made on the 4.0 branch to fix this issue:

• 47d00af

The following commits have been made on the 4.4 branch to fix this issue:

• 0a3c6d3

The following commits have been made on the 4.6 branch to fix this issue:

• 77a4d6e
• f2bfa7d745

More information

For further information and in case of questions, please contact the phpMyAdmin team. Our website is phpmyadmin.net.