CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-46817 — An issue was discovered in phpFox before 4.8.14

Critical CVSS 9.8

An issue was discovered in phpFox before 4.8.14. The url request parameter passed to the /core/redirect route is not properly sanitized before being used in a call to the unserialize() PHP function. This can be exploited by remote, unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary PHP objects into the application scope, allowing them to perform a variety of attacks, such as executing arbitrary PHP code.

Severity
Critical
CVSS
9.8 (3.1)
Published
2023-11-03
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-502

Affected products

  • phpfox / phpfox

Matched remediation archetype

Unsafe deserialization and object reconstruction

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Check exposure

  • Inventory serialization formats accepted from requests, queues, caches, files, cookies, and cross-service messages.
  • Trace whether untrusted input can select classes, types, callbacks, constructors, or object hooks during decoding.
  • Identify signing, schema validation, trust-boundary, and compatibility settings for each decoder.

Remediate safely

  • Replace native object deserialization with a data-only format and explicit schema validation.
  • If replacement is not immediate, use a safe decoder with a minimal type allowlist and disable polymorphic or executable hooks.
  • Update the affected library and add inert tests for unknown types, extra fields, malformed nesting, and unsigned data.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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