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Fencer Intel
medium 5.0

CVE-2012-0789 json

Memory leak in the timezone functionality in PHP before 5.3.9 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by…

published 2012-02-14 14 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2012-0820

cvss
5.0
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
8.0%
EPSS 8.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 94%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

Memory leak in the timezone functionality in PHP before 5.3.9 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by triggering many strtotime function calls, which are not properly handled by the php_date_parse_tzfile cache.

Patch / fix

  • php53 RHEL 5 5.3.3-13.el5_8
  • php53-gd RHEL 5 5.3.3-13.el5_8
  • php53-cli RHEL 5 5.3.3-13.el5_8
  • php53-dba RHEL 5 5.3.3-13.el5_8
  • php53-pdo RHEL 5 5.3.3-13.el5_8
  • php53-xml RHEL 5 5.3.3-13.el5_8
  • php53-imap RHEL 5 5.3.3-13.el5_8
  • php53-intl RHEL 5 5.3.3-13.el5_8

red hat advisories RHSA-2012:1047RHSA-2012:1046RHSA-2012:1045

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2012-0789 updated cvss 4.3

php: strtotime timezone memory leak

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 php
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) php 5.1.6-39.el5_8, php53 5.3.3-13.el5_8, php-gd 5.1.6-39.el5_8, php-cli 5.1.6-39.el5_8, php-dba 5.1.6-39.el5_8, php-pdo 5.1.6-39.el5_8, +32 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2012:1045
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) php 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-gd 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-cli 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-dba 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-pdo 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-xml 5.3.3-14.el6_3, +19 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) php 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-cli 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-common 5.3.3-14.el6_3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional (v. 6) php 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-gd 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-dba 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-pdo 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-xml 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-zts 5.3.3-14.el6_3, +17 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) php 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-gd 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-cli 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-pdo 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-xml 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-ldap 5.3.3-14.el6_3, +6 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 6) php 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-dba 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-zts 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-imap 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-intl 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-snmp 5.3.3-14.el6_3, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) php 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-gd 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-cli 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-pdo 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-xml 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-ldap 5.3.3-14.el6_3, +6 more
    +1 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 6) php 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-dba 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-zts 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-imap 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-intl 5.3.3-14.el6_3, php-snmp 5.3.3-14.el6_3, +8 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2012:1046
  • Red Hat RHEL Desktop Workstation (v. 5 client) php 5.1.6-39.el5_8, php53 5.3.3-13.el5_8, php-gd 5.1.6-39.el5_8, php-cli 5.1.6-39.el5_8, php-dba 5.1.6-39.el5_8, php-pdo 5.1.6-39.el5_8, +32 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2012:1045

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-36789)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

7.97% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 94% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-36789 PHP 5.3.8 - Remote Denial of Service dos, 2011-12-18
  • bugzilla.redhat.com https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=783609 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • bugs.php.net https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53502 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-399 Resource Management Errors
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.