PHPMailer 1.7, when configured to use sendmail, allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands via shell metacharacters in the SendmailSend function in class.phpmailer.php.

There are packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability referenced in the following CVE:

  - PHPMailer 1.7, when configured to use sendmail, allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary shell
    commands via shell metacharacters in the SendmailSend function in class.phpmailer.php. (CVE-2007-3215)

Thor Larholm discovered that PHPMailer, as used by Moodle, did not correctly escape email addresses. A local attacker with direct access to the Moodle database could exploit this to execute arbitrary commands as the web server user. (CVE-2007-3215)

Nigel McNie discovered that fetching https URLs did not correctly escape shell meta-characters. An authenticated remote attacker could execute arbitrary commands as the web server user, if curl was installed and configured. (CVE-2008-4796, MSA-09-0003)

It was discovered that Smarty (also included in Moodle), did not correctly filter certain inputs. An authenticated remote attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary PHP commands as the web server user. (CVE-2008-4810, CVE-2008-4811, CVE-2009-1669)

It was discovered that the unused SpellChecker extension in Moodle did not correctly handle temporary files. If the tool had been locally modified, it could be made to overwrite arbitrary local files via symlinks. (CVE-2008-5153)

Mike Churchward discovered that Moodle did not correctly filter Wiki page titles in certain areas. An authenticated remote attacker could exploit this to cause cross-site scripting (XSS), which could be used to modify or steal confidential data of other users within the same web domain. (CVE-2008-5432, MSA-08-0022)

It was discovered that the HTML sanitizer, 'Login as' feature, and logging in Moodle did not correctly handle certain inputs. An authenticated remote attacker could exploit this to generate XSS, which could be used to modify or steal confidential data of other users within the same web domain. (CVE-2008-5619, CVE-2009-0500, CVE-2009-0502, MSA-08-0026, MSA-09-0004, MSA-09-0007)

It was discovered that the HotPot module in Moodle did not correctly filter SQL inputs. An authenticated remote attacker could execute arbitrary SQL commands as the moodle database user, leading to a loss of privacy or denial of service. (CVE-2008-6124, MSA-08-0010)

Kevin Madura discovered that the forum actions and messaging settings in Moodle were not protected from cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
If an authenticated user were tricked into visiting a malicious website while logged into Moodle, a remote attacker could change the user's configurations or forum content. (CVE-2009-0499, MSA-09-0008, MSA-08-0023)

Daniel Cabezas discovered that Moodle would leak usernames from the Calendar Export tool. A remote attacker could gather a list of users, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2009-0501, MSA-09-0006)

Christian Eibl discovered that the TeX filter in Moodle allowed any function to be used. An authenticated remote attacker could post a specially crafted TeX formula to execute arbitrary TeX functions, potentially reading any file accessible to the web server user, leading to a loss of privacy. (CVE-2009-1171, MSA-09-0009)

Johannes Kuhn discovered that Moodle did not correctly validate user permissions when attempting to switch user accounts. An authenticated remote attacker could switch to any other Moodle user, leading to a loss of privacy. (MSA-08-0003)

Hanno Boeck discovered that unconfigured Moodle instances contained XSS vulnerabilities. An unauthenticated remote attacker could exploit this to modify or steal confidential data of other users within the same web domain. (MSA-08-0004)

Debbie McDonald, Mauno Korpelainen, Howard Miller, and Juan Segarra Montesinos discovered that when users were deleted from Moodle, their profiles and avatars were still visible. An authenticated remote attacker could exploit this to store information in profiles even after they were removed, leading to spam traffic. (MSA-08-0015, MSA-09-0001, MSA-09-0002)

Lars Vogdt discovered that Moodle did not correctly filter certain inputs. An authenticated remote attacker could exploit this to generate XSS from which they could modify or steal confidential data of other users within the same web domain. (MSA-08-0021)

It was discovered that Moodle did not correctly filter inputs for group creation, mnet, essay question, HOST param, wiki param, and others. An authenticated remote attacker could exploit this to generate XSS from which they could modify or steal confidential data of other users within the same web domain. (MDL-9288, MDL-11759, MDL-12079, MDL-12793, MDL-14806)

It was discovered that Moodle did not correctly filter SQL inputs when performing a restore. An attacker authenticated as a Moodle administrator could execute arbitrary SQL commands as the moodle database user, leading to a loss of privacy or denial of service.
(MDL-11857).

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Thor Larholm discovered that libphp-phpmailer, an email transfer class for PHP, performs insufficient input validition if configured to use Sendmail. This allows the execution of arbitrary shell commands.

The oldstable distribution (sarge) doesn't include libphp-phpmailer.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
433725	SCA: security update for phpmailer/phpmailer (GHSA-6h78-85v2-mmch)	Tenable Cloud Security	SCA Checks	critical
433725	SCA: security update for phpmailer/phpmailer (GHSA-6h78-85v2-mmch)	Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security	SCA Checks	critical
39516	Ubuntu 8.04 LTS / 8.10 : moodle vulnerabilities (USN-791-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	critical
25581	Debian DSA-1315-1 : libphp-phpmailer - missing input validation	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2007-3215

critical

Tenable Plugins

critical

critical

critical

medium