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OpenAdvisories
High · 7.8 CVE-2026-41570 EUVD-2026-28649GHSA-qrr6-mg7r-m243

PHPUnit: Argument injection via newline in PHP INI values forwarded to child processes

Published May 8, 2026 · Updated May 8, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

PHPUnit is a testing framework for PHP. In versions 12.5.21 and 13.1.5, PHPUnit forwards PHP INI settings to child processes (used for isolated/PHPT test execution) as -d name=value command-line arguments without neutralizing INI metacharacters. Because PHP's INI parser interprets " as a string delimiter, ; as the start of a comment, and most importantly a newline as a directive separator, a value containing a newline is parsed by the child process as multiple INI directives. An attacker able to influence a single INI value can therefore inject arbitrary additional directives into the child's configuration, including auto_prepend_file, extension, disable_functions, open_basedir, and others. Setting auto_prepend_file to an attacker-controlled path yields remote code execution in the child process. This issue has been patched in versions 12.5.22 and 13.1.6.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
sebastianbergmann phpunit = 12.5.21, = 13.1.5 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 phpunit No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS phpunit No fix yet —
Ubuntu 25.10 phpunit No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS phpunit No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS phpunit No fix yet —
Show 3 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS phpunit No fix yet —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS phpunit No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS phpunit No fix yet —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Packagist phpunit/phpunit >= 12.5.21, < 12.5.22 12.5.22 GHSA-qrr6-mg7r-m243
Packagist phpunit/phpunit >= 13.1.5, < 13.1.6 13.1.6 GHSA-qrr6-mg7r-m243

References