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HIGHpublic exploit

CVE-2026-40261

CVE-2026-40261 — Composer has Command Injection via Malicious Perforce Reference

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Versions 1.0 through 2.2.26 and 2.3 through 2.9.5 contain a command injection vulnerability in the Perforce::syncCodeBase() method, which appends the $sourceReference parameter to a shell command without proper escaping, and additionally in the Perforce::generateP4Command() method as in GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p / CVE-2026-40176, which interpolates user-supplied Perforce connection parameters (port, user, client) from the source url field without proper escaping. An attacker can inject arbitrary commands through crafted source reference or source url values containing shell metacharacters, even if Perforce is not installed. Unlike CVE-2026-40176, the source reference and url are provided as part of package metadata, meaning any compromised or malicious Composer repository can serve package metadata declaring perforce as a source type with malicious…

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

Exploit code

public exploit, none observed

EPSS

2%

chance of exploitation in 30 days

Affects

composer

2 products listed

CVSS base

8.8

HIGH

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)

composerredhat

Products (2)

composerred hat hardened images

Every base score collected

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

ScoreVersionSeverityExpl.ImpactSource
8.8CVSS 3.1HIGH——cvelistV5

Weakness & attack patterns

  • CWE-78
  • CWE-20

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

Public exploit

Capability, not use: code existing is a different claim from anyone running it.

Indexed by

poc in github

References

6 on the record

Elsewhere on this site

  • composerevery CVE for this vendor
  • redhatevery CVE for this vendor
  • CWE-78other 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.