Cross-site scripting in PHP - CVE-2009-5016
Published: October 30, 2018 / Updated: June 8, 2025
PHP
Detailed vulnerability description
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
The vulnerability exists due to insufficient sanitization of user-supplied data when processing data passed via a crafted string that uses overlong UTF-8 encoding, a different vulnerability than CVE-2010-3870. A remote attacker can trick the victim to follow a specially crafted link and execute arbitrary HTML and script code in user's browser in context of vulnerable website.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to steal potentially sensitive information, change appearance of the web page, perform phishing and drive-by-download attacks.
How to mitigate CVE-2009-5016
Sources
- http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=49687
- http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-January/052836.html
- http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-January/052845.html
- http://secunia.com/advisories/42410
- http://secunia.com/advisories/42812
- http://sirdarckcat.blogspot.com/2009/10/couple-of-unicode-issues-on-php-and.html
- http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-09/VELANAVA/BHUSA09-VelaNava-FavoriteXSS-SLIDES.pdf
- http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2010-0919.html
- http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2011-0195.html
- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/44889
- http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-1042-1
- http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2010/3081
- http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2011/0020
- http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2011/0021
- http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2011/0077