CVE-2009-3294: PHP

Medium severity, CVSS 5.0. EPSS: 2.7% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The popen API function in TSRM/tsrm_win32.c in PHP before 5.2.11 and 5.3.x before 5.3.1, when running on certain Windows operating systems, allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted (1) "e" or (2) "er" string in the second argument (aka mode), possibly related to the _fdopen function in the Microsoft C runtime library. NOTE: this might not cross privilege boundaries except in rare cases in which the mode argument is accessible to an attacker outside of an application that uses the popen function.

Affected products

• PHP PHP: from 5.2.0, before 5.2.11 (fixed in 5.2.11); from 5.3.0, before 5.3.1 (fixed in 5.3.1)

Published 2009-09-22. Last modified 2026-06-16.