PHPMailer 5.2.23 has XSS in the "From Email Address" and "To Email Address" fields of code_generator.php.

The remote Ubuntu 16.04 ESM / 18.04 ESM / 20.04 ESM / 22.04 ESM host has a package installed that is affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the USN-5956-1 advisory.

  - The mailSend function in the isMail transport in PHPMailer before 5.2.18 might allow remote attackers to     pass extra parameters to the mail command and consequently execute arbitrary code via a \ (backslash     double quote) in a crafted Sender property. (CVE-2016-10033)

  - The isMail transport in PHPMailer before 5.2.20 might allow remote attackers to pass extra parameters to     the mail command and consequently execute arbitrary code by leveraging improper interaction between the     escapeshellarg function and internal escaping performed in the mail function in PHP. NOTE: this     vulnerability exists because of an incorrect fix for CVE-2016-10033. (CVE-2016-10045)

  - PHPMailer 5.2.23 has XSS in the From Email Address and To Email Address fields of code_generator.php.
    (CVE-2017-11503)

  - An issue was discovered in PHPMailer before 5.2.22. PHPMailer's msgHTML method applies transformations to     an HTML document to make it usable as an email message body. One of the transformations is to convert     relative image URLs into attachments using a script-provided base directory. If no base directory is     provided, it resolves to /, meaning that relative image URLs get treated as absolute local file paths and     added as attachments. To form a remote vulnerability, the msgHTML method must be called, passed an     unfiltered, user-supplied HTML document, and must not set a base directory. (CVE-2017-5223)

  - PHPMailer before 5.2.27 and 6.x before 6.0.6 is vulnerable to an object injection attack. (CVE-2018-19296)

  - PHPMailer before 6.1.6 contains an output escaping bug when the name of a file attachment contains a     double quote character. This can result in the file type being misinterpreted by the receiver or any mail     relay processing the message. (CVE-2020-13625)

  - PHPMailer 6.4.1 and earlier contain a vulnerability that can result in untrusted code being called (if     such code is injected into the host project's scope by other means). If the $patternselect parameter to     validateAddress() is set to 'php' (the default, defined by PHPMailer::$validator), and the global     namespace contains a function called php, it will be called in preference to the built-in validator of the     same name. Mitigated in PHPMailer 6.5.0 by denying the use of simple strings as validator function names.
    (CVE-2021-3603)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

The remote Ubuntu 16.04 ESM / 18.04 ESM host has a package installed that is affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the USN-5956-2 advisory.

  - PHPMailer 5.2.23 has XSS in the From Email Address and To Email Address fields of code_generator.php.
    (CVE-2017-11503)

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

PHPMailer reports :

Fix XSS vulnerability in one of the code examples, CVE-2017-11503. The code_generator.phps example did not filter user input prior to output.
This file is distributed with a .phps extension, so it it not normally executable unless it is explicitly renamed, so it is safe by default.
There was also an undisclosed potential XSS vulnerability in the default exception handler (unused by default). Patches for both issues kindly provided by Patrick Monnerat of the Fedora Project.

Update to 5.2.24: fixes XSS vulnerability CVE-2017-11503.

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

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
172589	Ubuntu 16.04 ESM / 18.04 ESM / 20.04 ESM / 22.04 ESM : PHPMailer vulnerabilities (USN-5956-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	critical
172588	Ubuntu 16.04 ESM / 18.04 ESM : PHPMailer vulnerability (USN-5956-2)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	medium
102724	FreeBSD : phpmailer -- XSS in code example and default exeception handler (c5d79773-8801-11e7-93f7-d43d7e971a1b)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	medium
102377	Fedora 24 : php-PHPMailer (2017-0bc23764e7)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
102213	Fedora 26 : php-PHPMailer (2017-ab55648aa7)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
102050	Fedora 25 : php-PHPMailer (2017-f838eb0c5e)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2017-11503

medium

Tenable Plugins

critical

medium

medium

medium

medium

medium