{"id":"GHSA-m298-fh5c-jc66","summary":"Object injection in PHPMailer/PHPMailer","details":"### Impact\nThis is a reintroduction of an earlier issue (CVE-2018-19296) by an unrelated bug fix in PHPMailer 6.1.8.  An external file may be unexpectedly executable if it is used as a path to an attachment file via PHP's support for `.phar` files. Exploitation requires that an attacker is able to provide an unfiltered path to a file to attach, or to trick calling code into generating one. See [this article](https://knasmueller.net/5-answers-about-php-phar-exploitation) for more info.\n\n### Patches\nThis issue was patched in the PHPMailer 6.4.1 release. This release also implements stricter filtering for attachment paths; paths that look like *any* kind of URL are rejected.\n\n### Workarounds\nValidate paths to loaded files using the same pattern as used in [`isPermittedPath()`](https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/blob/master/src/PHPMailer.php#L1815) before using them in *any* PHP file function, such as `file_exists`. This method can't be used directly because it is protected, but you can implement the same thing in calling code. Note that this should be applied to *all* user-supplied paths passed into such functions; it's not a problem specific to PHPMailer.\n\n### Credit\nThis issue was found by [Fariskhi Vidyan](https://github.com/farisv), reported and managed via Tidelift.","aliases":["BIT-phpmailer-2020-36326","BIT-wordpress-2020-36326","BIT-wordpress-multisite-2020-36326","CVE-2020-36326"],"modified":"2026-07-21T14:00:30.274567747Z","published":"2021-05-04T17:42:13Z","database_specific":{"severity":"CRITICAL","github_reviewed":true,"github_reviewed_at":"2021-04-30T19:41:24Z","nvd_published_at":"2021-04-28T03:15:00Z","cwe_ids":["CWE-502","CWE-641"]},"references":[{"type":"WEB","url":"https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/security/advisories/GHSA-m298-fh5c-jc66"},{"type":"ADVISORY","url":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-36326"},{"type":"WEB","url":"https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/commit/e2e07a355ee8ff36aba21d0242c5950c56e4c6f9"},{"type":"WEB","url":"https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/phpmailer/phpmailer/CVE-2020-36326.yaml"},{"type":"PACKAGE","url":"https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer"},{"type":"WEB","url":"https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/releases/tag/v6.4.1"},{"type":"WEB","url":"https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/3B5WDPGUFNPG4NAZ6G4BZX43BKLAVA5B"},{"type":"WEB","url":"https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/KPU66INRFY5BQ3ESVPRUXJR4DXQAFJVT"}],"affected":[{"package":{"name":"phpmailer/phpmailer","ecosystem":"Packagist","purl":"pkg:composer/phpmailer/phpmailer"},"ranges":[{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.1.8"},{"fixed":"6.4.1"}]}],"versions":["v6.1.8","v6.2.0","v6.3.0","v6.4.0"],"database_specific":{"source":"https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2021/05/GHSA-m298-fh5c-jc66/GHSA-m298-fh5c-jc66.json"}}],"schema_version":"1.9.0","severity":[{"type":"CVSS_V3","score":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H"}]}