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CVE-2012-1823

Critical CVSS 9.8 Known exploited

Published 2012-05-11 · last changed 2026-06-16 · added to CISA KEV 2022-03-25

This one is being exploited in the wild.

CISA added CVE-2012-1823 to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-25. Federal agencies are required to remediate it on a deadline. If you have affected machines, this is the class of finding that moves ahead of the rest of the queue.

The fix

We hold no Microsoft remediation data for CVE-2012-1823, which normally means it is not a Windows CVE. For non-Microsoft software the fix is the vendor's own updated release, and the affected versions are listed below.

What it is

sapi/cgi/cgi_main.c in PHP before 5.3.12 and 5.4.x before 5.4.2, when configured as a CGI script (aka php-cgi), does not properly handle query strings that lack an = (equals sign) character, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by placing command-line options in the query string, related to lack of skipping a certain php_getopt for the 'd' case.

Sources

CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H