USN-1437-1: PHP vulnerability
4 May 2012
Standalone PHP CGI scripts could be made to execute arbitrary code with the privilege of the web server.
Releases
Packages
- php5 - HTML-embedded scripting language interpreter
Details
It was discovered that PHP, when used as a stand alone CGI processor
for the Apache Web Server, did not properly parse and filter query
strings. This could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code
running with the privilege of the web server. Configurations using
mod_php5 and FastCGI were not vulnerable.
This update addresses the issue when the PHP CGI interpreter
is configured using mod_cgi and mod_actions as described in
/usr/share/doc/php5-cgi/README.Debian.gz; however, if an alternate
configuration is used to enable PHP CGI processing, it should be
reviewed to ensure that command line arguments cannot be passed to
the PHP interpreter. Please see CVE-2012-2311 for more details and
potential mitigation approaches.
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
Ubuntu 8.04
Ubuntu 12.04
Ubuntu 11.10
Ubuntu 11.04
Ubuntu 10.04
In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.