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MEDIUM

CVE-2023-43655

CVE-2023-43655 — Remote Code Execution via web-accessible composer.phar

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Users publishing a composer.phar to a public web-accessible server where the composer.phar can be executed as a php file may be subject to a remote code execution vulnerability if PHP also has `register_argc_argv` enabled in php.ini. Versions 2.6.4, 2.2.22 and 1.10.27 patch this vulnerability. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should make sure `register_argc_argv` is disabled in php.ini, and avoid publishing composer.phar to the web as this is not best practice.

Published Updated Sources: cvelistV5, GitHub_M

Triage

Is it exploited, how likely is exploitation, what does it touch, and how severe do the scoring sources call it.

Exploitation

Unreported

no source claims exploitation

EPSS

1%

chance of exploitation in 30 days

Affects

composer

composer

CVSS base

6.4

MEDIUM

CISA SSVC assessment

Three decision points CISA publishes for the CVEs it assesses · SSVC 2.0.3. A stakeholder decision, not a severity score.

CISA

Exploitation

None

none · proof-of-concept · active

Automatable

No

can an attacker script all four kill-chain steps

Technical impact

Total

partial · total control of the vulnerable component

Affected scope

The catalog records vendors and products as separate lists, not pairs, so which product belongs to which vendor is not something this page can say.

Vendors (2)

composerdocker

Products (1)

composer

Every base score collected

Sources score independently and disagree; each row says who scored it and under which version.

ScoreVersionSeverityExpl.ImpactSource
6.4CVSS 3.1MEDIUM——cvelistV5

Weakness & attack patterns

  • CWE-74

Attack patterns reported against this CVE. The ATT&CK techniques below are inferred from its weakness class.

  • T1562.003Impair Defenses: Impair Command History Logging
  • T1574.006Hijack Execution Flow: Dynamic Linker Hijacking
  • T1574.007Hijack Execution Flow: Path Interception by PATH Environment Variable

References

8 on the record

Elsewhere on this site

  • composerevery CVE for this vendor
  • dockerevery CVE for this vendor
  • CWE-74other pages naming this weakness

Not in any source we poll

Listed rather than left blank: an empty field and an unmeasured one look identical on screen, and only one is a reason to look elsewhere.

  • No confirmed IOCs, IP addresses, domains, file hashes, or malware artifacts supplied.
  • No organization-specific asset inventory, compensating-control status, or patch deployment evidence supplied.
  • No exploit packet captures, log samples, or incident case IDs supplied.