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Fencer Intel
high 7.7

CVE-2020-4043 json

Phar unserialization vulnerability in phpMussel

published 6y ago modified 4mo ago also GHSA-qr95-4mq5-r3fh , EUVD-2020-0510

cvss
7.7
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.6%
EPSS 2.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 85%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

phpMussel from versions 1.0.0 and less than 1.6.0 has an unserialization vulnerability in PHP's phar wrapper. Uploading a specially crafted file to an affected version allows arbitrary code execution (discovered, tested, and confirmed by myself), so the risk factor should be regarded as very high. Newer phpMussel versions don't use PHP's phar wrapper, and are therefore unaffected. This has been fixed in version 1.6.0.

Patch / fix

  • packagist phpmussel/phpmussel 1.6.0
  • packagist maikuolan/phpmussel 1.6.0
  • phpmussel_project phpmussel 1.6.0

Is CVE-2020-4043 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Exploit prediction

2.60% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 85% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.1 7.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
packagist phpmussel/phpmussel
>=1.0.0, <1.6.0
1.6.0
packagist maikuolan/phpmussel
>=1.0.0, <1.6.0
1.6.0

Affected products

  • phpMussel phpMussel

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data

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.