CISA Alerts on Active Exploitation of PHPMailer Command Injection Flaw

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a critical alert regarding the active exploitation of a long-standing vulnerability in PHPMailer, a widely used open-source email-sending library for PHP applications.

The flaw, tracked as CVE-2016-10033, poses a significant threat to organizations relying on PHPMailer for email functionality within their web applications.

Vulnerability Overview

The PHPMailer command injection vulnerability arises from improper sanitization of user-supplied input, specifically impacting the mail() function within the class.phpmailer.php script.

This flaw allows an attacker to inject arbitrary commands that the affected application executes, potentially leading to remote code execution.

In cases where exploitation fails, the result may be a denial-of-service (DoS) condition, disrupting legitimate operations.

Technical Details

• CVE Identifier: CVE-2016-10033
• Vulnerable Component: class.phpmailer.php (mail() function)
• Weaknesses:
  • CWE-77: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in a Command (‘Command Injection’)
  • CWE-88: Argument Injection or Modification
• Potential Impact: Remote code execution, denial-of-service

CISA ...