Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls in PHP - CVE-2008-5624

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Main Vulnerability Database Vulnerabilities #VU110334

Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls in PHP - CVE-2008-5624

Published: October 11, 2018 / Updated: June 8, 2025


Vulnerability identifier: #VU110334
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 6.9 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2008-5624
CWE-ID: CWE-264
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability: No public exploit available

Vulnerability details

The vulnerability allows a remote non-authenticated attacker to read and manipulate data.

PHP 5 before 5.2.7 does not properly initialize the page_uid and page_gid global variables for use by the SAPI php_getuid function, which allows context-dependent attackers to bypass safe_mode restrictions via variable settings that are intended to be restricted to root, as demonstrated by a setting of /etc for the error_log variable.


Affected software

PHP
Ubuntu
php5-cli (Ubuntu package)
php5-gd (Ubuntu package)
php5-cgi (Ubuntu package)
libapache2-mod-php5 (Ubuntu package)
libapache2-mod-php5filter (Ubuntu package)

How to mitigate CVE-2008-5624

Install update from vendor's website.

PHP - update to 5.2.8
php5-cli (Ubuntu package) - addressed in versions 5.1.2-1ubuntu3.13, 5.2.3-1ubuntu6.5, 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.5, 5.2.6-2ubuntu4.1
php5-gd (Ubuntu package) - addressed in versions 5.1.2-1ubuntu3.13, 5.2.3-1ubuntu6.5, 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.5, 5.2.6-2ubuntu4.1
php5-cgi (Ubuntu package) - addressed in versions 5.1.2-1ubuntu3.13, 5.2.3-1ubuntu6.5, 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.5, 5.2.6-2ubuntu4.1
libapache2-mod-php5 (Ubuntu package) - addressed in versions 5.1.2-1ubuntu3.13, 5.2.3-1ubuntu6.5, 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.5, 5.2.6-2ubuntu4.1
libapache2-mod-php5filter (Ubuntu package) - update to 5.2.6-2ubuntu4.1

External References

Related Security Bulletins