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NVD
7.8 HighCWE-20
CVE-2026-40176

Composer is vulnerable to Command Injection via Malicious Perforce Repository

composer

Status
  • Not in CISA KEV
  • Vendor fix available
Exploit probabilityEPSSchecked 25 Oct
1.0%probability of exploitation in the next 30 days

Higher than 64% of scored CVEs

SeverityCVSS
7.8High

Description NVD

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Versions 1.0 through 2.2.26 and 2.3 through 2.9.5 contain a command injection vulnerability in the Perforce::generateP4Command() method, which constructs shell commands by interpolating user-supplied Perforce connection parameters (port, user, client) without proper escaping. An attacker can inject arbitrary commands through these values in a malicious composer.json declaring a Perforce VCS repository, leading to command execution in the context of the user running Composer, even if Perforce is not installed. VCS repositories are only loaded from the root composer.json or the composer config directory, so this cannot be exploited through composer.json files of packages installed as dependencies. Users are at risk if they run Composer commands on untrusted projects with attacker-supplied composer.json files. This issue has been fixed in Composer 2.2.27 (2.2 LTS) and 2.9.6 (mainline).

Coverage 2 articles · 2 outlets

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CVE-2026-40176 coverage
Published (UTC)OutletHeadline
Tue 14 Apr · 17:21 UTCThe Hacker NewsComposer Flaws Let Attackers Run Arbitrary Code via JSON
Wed 15 Apr · 09:19 UTCSecurity AffairsPHP Composer bugs enable RCE via Perforce VCS driver
First in our coverage: The Hacker News, 14 AprRSS feed
  1. PHP Composer bugs enable RCE via Perforce VCS driverSecurity Affairs
  2. Composer Flaws Let Attackers Run Arbitrary Code via JSONThe Hacker News · first in our coverage

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