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

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

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

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.

    Dawid Golunski discovered that PHPMailer was not properly escaping user input data used as arguments to     functions executed by the system shell. An attacker could possibly use this issue to execute arbitrary     code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 16.04 ESM. (CVE-2016-10033, CVE-2016-10045)

    It was discovered that PHPMailer was not properly escaping characters in certain fields of the     code_generator.php example code. An attacker could possibly use this issue to conduct cross-site scripting     (XSS) attacks. This issue was only fixed in Ubuntu 16.04 ESM and Ubuntu 18.04 ESM. (CVE-2017-11503)

    Yongxiang Li discovered that PHPMailer was not properly converting relative paths provided as user input     when adding attachments to messages, which could lead to relative image URLs being treated as absolute     local file paths and added as attachments. An attacker could possibly use this issue to access     unauthorized resources and expose sensitive information. This issue only affected Ubuntu 16.04 ESM.
    (CVE-2017-5223)

    Sehun Oh discovered that PHPMailer was not properly processing untrusted non-local file attachments, which     could lead to an object injection. An attacker could possibly use this issue to execute arbitrary code.
    This issue only affected Ubuntu 16.04 ESM. (CVE-2018-19296)

    Elar Lang discovered that PHPMailer was not properly escaping file attachment names, which could lead to a     misinterpretation of file types by entities processing the message. An attacker could possibly use this     issue to bypass attachment filters. This issue was only fixed in Ubuntu 16.04 ESM and Ubuntu 20.04 ESM.
    (CVE-2020-13625)

    It was discovered that PHPMailer was not properly handling callables in its validateAddress function,     which could result in untrusted code being called should the global namespace contain a function called     'php'. An attacker could possibly use this issue to execute arbitrary code. This issue was only fixed in     Ubuntu 20.04 ESM and Ubuntu 22.04 ESM. (CVE-2021-3603)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

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.

    USN-5956-1 fixed vulnerabilities in PHPMailer. It was discovered that the fix for CVE-2017-11503 was     incomplete. This update fixes the problem.



Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

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	Type	Severity
423509	SCA: security update for phpmailer/phpmailer (GHSA-58mj-pw57-4vm2)	Tenable Cloud Security	SCA Checks	Local	medium
423509	SCA: security update for phpmailer/phpmailer (GHSA-58mj-pw57-4vm2)	Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security	SCA Checks	Local	medium
172589	Ubuntu 16.04 ESM / 18.04 ESM / 20.04 ESM / 22.04 ESM : PHPMailer vulnerabilities (USN-5956-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	Local	critical
172588	Ubuntu 16.04 ESM / 18.04 ESM : PHPMailer vulnerability (USN-5956-2)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	Local	medium
102724	FreeBSD : phpmailer -- XSS in code example and default exeception handler (c5d79773-8801-11e7-93f7-d43d7e971a1b)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	Local	medium
102377	Fedora 24 : php-PHPMailer (2017-0bc23764e7)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	Local	medium
102213	Fedora 26 : php-PHPMailer (2017-ab55648aa7)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	Local	medium
102050	Fedora 25 : php-PHPMailer (2017-f838eb0c5e)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	Local	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2017-11503

medium

Tenable Plugins

medium

medium

critical

medium

medium

medium

medium

medium