USN-5956-2

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    USN-5956-2

    Published: 15 Mar 2023Last Modified: 25 Jun 2026

    Summary: libphp-phpmailer vulnerability

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

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: libphp-phpmailer

    Purl: pkg:deb/ubuntu/libphp-phpmailer?arch=source&distro=esm-apps%2Fxenial

    Affected ranges

    Type: ECOSYSTEM

    Events:

    Introduced- 0
    Fixed -5.2.14+dfsg-1ubuntu0.1~esm2

    Affected versions

    5.2.10+dfsg-1
    5.2.14+dfsg-1
    5.2.14+dfsg-1build1
    5.2.14+dfsg-1ubuntu0.1~esm1

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High
    USN-5956-2 | CVE-DB