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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2015-9253 json

An issue was discovered in PHP 7.3.x before 7.3.0alpha3, 7.2.x before 7.2.8, and before 7.1.20.

published 2018-02-19 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2015-9096

cvss
6.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
4.2%
EPSS 4.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 90%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in PHP 7.3.x before 7.3.0alpha3, 7.2.x before 7.2.8, and before 7.1.20. The php-fpm master process restarts a child process in an endless loop when using program execution functions (e.g., passthru, exec, shell_exec, or system) with a non-blocking STDIN stream, causing this master process to consume 100% of the CPU, and consume disk space with a large volume of error logs, as demonstrated by an attack by a customer of a shared-hosting facility.

Patch / fix

  • php php 7.1.20, 7.2.8
  • php7.2 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 7.2.10-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
  • php5 Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 5.5.9+dfsg-1ubuntu4.29+esm10
  • php7.0 Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 7.0.33-0ubuntu0.16.04.16+esm3

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2015-9253

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • php7 SLES for SAP 15 SP1, SLES for SAP 15, SLES 15-LTSS +8 more 7.2.34-150000.4.103.1
  • php7 SLES for SAP 15 SP1, SLES for SAP 15, SLES 15-LTSS +7 more 7.2.5-4.89.4
  • php72 SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5, SLE Module for Web and Scripting 12 7.2.5-1.75.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2022:4067-1SUSE-SU-2022:0679-1SUSE-SU-2022:0577-1

  • php7 Alpine 3.15, Alpine 3.14, Alpine 3.13 +5 more 7.2.8-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2015-9253

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • php-fpm Arch Linux 7.2.8-1

arch linux advisories AVG-622

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-2015-9253 updated cvss 7.5

php: Infinite loop in php-fpm when restarting a child using program execution function

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 php, php53 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 php, php-gd, php-cli, php-dba, php-fpm, php-pdo, +20 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 php, php-gd, php-cli, php-dba, php-fpm, php-pdo, +18 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 php, libzip, php-gd, php-cli, php-dba, php-dbg, +30 more Red Hat Software Collections rh-php56-php, rh-php70-php, rh-php71-php, rh-php56-php-gd, rh-php70-php-gd, rh-php71-php-gd, +80 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

Exploit prediction

4.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 90% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • bugs.php.net https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=73342https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/3287 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • bugs.php.net https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=70185 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • bugs.php.net https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=75968 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • futureweb.at https://www.futureweb.at/security/CVE-2015-9253/ referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 6.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
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.