CVE-2023-35169

Publication date 23 June 2023

Last updated 4 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Medium

Why this priority?

Cvss 3 Severity Score

9.0 · Critical

Score breakdown

Description

PHP-IMAP is a wrapper for common IMAP communication without the need to have the php-imap module installed / enabled. Prior to version 5.3.0, an unsanitized attachment filename allows any unauthenticated user to leverage a directory traversal vulnerability, which results in a remote code execution vulnerability. Every application that stores attachments with `Attachment::save()` without providing a `$filename` or passing unsanitized user input is affected by this attack. An attacker can send an email with a malicious attachment to the inbox, which gets crawled with `webklex/php-imap` or `webklex/laravel-imap`. Prerequisite for the vulnerability is that the script stores the attachments without providing a `$filename`, or providing an unsanitized `$filename`, in `src/Attachment::save(string $path, string $filename = null)`. In this case, where no `$filename` gets passed into the `Attachment::save()` method, the package would use a series of unsanitized and insecure input values from the mail as fallback. Even if a developer passes a `$filename` into the `Attachment::save()` method, e.g. by passing the name or filename of the mail attachment itself (from email headers), the input values never get sanitized by the package. There is also no restriction about the file extension (e.g. ".php") or the contents of a file. This allows an attacker to upload malicious code of any type and content at any location where the underlying user has write permissions. The attacker can also overwrite existing files and inject malicious code into files that, e.g. get executed by the system via cron or requests. Version 5.3.0 contains a patch for this issue.

Status

Package Ubuntu Release Status
php-imap 25.10 questing
Needs evaluation
25.04 plucky Ignored end of life, was needs-triage
24.10 oracular Not in release
24.04 LTS noble Not in release
23.10 mantic Not in release
23.04 lunar Not in release
22.10 kinetic Not in release
22.04 LTS jammy Not in release
20.04 LTS focal Not in release
18.04 LTS bionic Ignored end of standard support
16.04 LTS xenial Ignored end of standard support
14.04 LTS trusty Ignored end of standard support

Severity score breakdown

Parameter Value
Base score 9.0 · Critical
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity High
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Scope Changed
Confidentiality High
Integrity impact High
Availability impact High
Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

Other references

Access our resources on patching vulnerabilities