CVE-2012-1823

CRITICALNVD 9.89.8—
EchelonGraph scoreMEDIUM confidence

Score elevated to 9.8 because this CVE is listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-25), indicating real-world exploitation has been confirmed by US federal agencies. NVD baseline CVSS 9.8 retained for reference. Confidence: HIGH.

Triggered by: CISA KEV (actively exploited)
Sources: cisa_kev, epss, ghsa, nvd
Trending — 4 sources updated this weekExploited in the wild
9.8
EchelonGraph verdictPatch nowTreat as an emergency — this is being exploited.
  • Actively exploited in the wild (CISA-KEV)
CISA-KEV: ExploitedEPSS: 100%CVSS: 9.8Exploit: NoneExposed: 0

A fix is available — apply it.

sapi/cgi/cgi_main.c in PHP before 5.3.12 and 5.4.x before 5.4.2, when configured as a CGI script (aka php-cgi), does not properly handle query strings that lack an = (equals sign) character, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by placing command-line options in the query string, related to lack of skipping a certain php_getopt for the 'd' case.

CVSS v3
9.8
EG Score
9.8(medium)
EPSS
100.0%
KEV
⚠ Exploited

Published

May 11, 2012

Last Modified

April 21, 2026

Advisory Details (4)

Auto-updated Apr 30, 2026
No patch confirmed yet.
generic
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012-0568.html
generic
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012-0547.html
generic
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2012-0546.html
generic

'[security bulletin] HPSBUX02791 SSRT100856 rev.1 - HP-UX Apache Web Server running PHP, Remote Execu' - MARC

http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=134012830914727&w=2

Patch Availability(5)

Vendor / EcosystemFixed in / PatchReleasedSource
ubuntuphp5-cgi (5.3.10-1ubuntu3.1) @ precise2026-07-13ubuntu
redhatphp-0:5.3.3-3.el6_1.42012-05-10redhat
redhatphp53-0:5.3.3-1.el5_6.22012-05-10redhat
redhatphp-0:5.3.3-3.el6_2.82012-05-07redhat
redhatphp53-0:5.3.3-7.el5_82012-05-07redhat

Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.

Weakness Classification(2)

MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.

All Vendor Advisories

(5)

Every vendor that published an advisory referencing this CVE — pulled from our cve_vendor_advisories aggregation. Click any row for the vendor's original advisory page.

Data Freshness Timeline

(refreshed 136× in last 7d / 579× in last 30d)

Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.

Showing the most recent 100 of 887 total refreshes for this CVE.

  1. 2026-07-13 18:49 UTCEG score recompute
  2. 2026-07-13 18:49 UTCVendor advisory
  3. 2026-07-13 18:49 UTCGHSA enrichment
  4. 2026-07-13 17:07 UTCCISA KEV update
  5. 2026-07-13 15:02 UTCEG score recompute
  6. 2026-07-13 15:02 UTCVendor advisory
  7. 2026-07-13 15:02 UTCGHSA enrichment
  8. 2026-07-13 11:15 UTCEG score recompute
  9. 2026-07-13 11:15 UTCVendor advisory
  10. 2026-07-13 11:15 UTCGHSA enrichment
  11. 2026-07-13 07:29 UTCEG score recompute
  12. 2026-07-13 07:29 UTCVendor advisory
  13. 2026-07-13 07:29 UTCGHSA enrichment
  14. 2026-07-13 03:43 UTCEG score recompute
  15. 2026-07-13 03:43 UTCVendor advisory
  16. 2026-07-13 03:43 UTCGHSA enrichment
  17. 2026-07-12 23:57 UTCEG score recompute
  18. 2026-07-12 23:57 UTCVendor advisory
  19. 2026-07-12 23:57 UTCGHSA enrichment
  20. 2026-07-12 20:11 UTCEG score recompute
  21. 2026-07-12 20:11 UTCVendor advisory
  22. 2026-07-12 20:11 UTCGHSA enrichment
  23. 2026-07-12 16:25 UTCEG score recompute
  24. 2026-07-12 16:25 UTCVendor advisory
  25. 2026-07-12 16:25 UTCGHSA enrichment
Show 75 more
  1. 2026-07-12 12:39 UTCEG score recompute
  2. 2026-07-12 12:39 UTCVendor advisory
  3. 2026-07-12 12:39 UTCGHSA enrichment
  4. 2026-07-12 08:53 UTCEG score recompute
  5. 2026-07-12 08:53 UTCVendor advisory
  6. 2026-07-12 08:53 UTCGHSA enrichment
  7. 2026-07-12 05:07 UTCEG score recompute
  8. 2026-07-12 05:07 UTCVendor advisory
  9. 2026-07-12 05:07 UTCGHSA enrichment
  10. 2026-07-12 01:20 UTCEG score recompute
  11. 2026-07-12 01:20 UTCVendor advisory
  12. 2026-07-12 01:20 UTCGHSA enrichment
  13. 2026-07-11 21:34 UTCEG score recompute
  14. 2026-07-11 21:34 UTCVendor advisory
  15. 2026-07-11 21:34 UTCGHSA enrichment
  16. 2026-07-11 17:48 UTCEG score recompute
  17. 2026-07-11 17:48 UTCVendor advisory
  18. 2026-07-11 17:48 UTCGHSA enrichment
  19. 2026-07-11 14:02 UTCEG score recompute
  20. 2026-07-11 14:02 UTCVendor advisory
  21. 2026-07-11 14:02 UTCGHSA enrichment
  22. 2026-07-11 10:13 UTCEG score recompute
  23. 2026-07-11 10:13 UTCVendor advisory
  24. 2026-07-11 10:13 UTCGHSA enrichment
  25. 2026-07-11 06:26 UTCEG score recompute
  26. 2026-07-11 06:26 UTCVendor advisory
  27. 2026-07-11 06:26 UTCGHSA enrichment
  28. 2026-07-11 02:40 UTCEG score recompute
  29. 2026-07-11 02:40 UTCVendor advisory
  30. 2026-07-11 02:40 UTCGHSA enrichment
  31. 2026-07-10 22:54 UTCEG score recompute
  32. 2026-07-10 22:54 UTCVendor advisory
  33. 2026-07-10 22:54 UTCGHSA enrichment
  34. 2026-07-10 19:07 UTCEG score recompute
  35. 2026-07-10 19:07 UTCVendor advisory
  36. 2026-07-10 19:07 UTCGHSA enrichment
  37. 2026-07-10 17:52 UTCCISA KEV update
  38. 2026-07-10 15:20 UTCEG score recompute
  39. 2026-07-10 15:20 UTCVendor advisory
  40. 2026-07-10 15:20 UTCGHSA enrichment
  41. 2026-07-10 11:29 UTCEG score recompute
  42. 2026-07-10 11:29 UTCVendor advisory
  43. 2026-07-10 11:29 UTCGHSA enrichment
  44. 2026-07-10 07:43 UTCEG score recompute
  45. 2026-07-10 07:43 UTCVendor advisory
  46. 2026-07-10 07:43 UTCGHSA enrichment
  47. 2026-07-10 03:56 UTCEG score recompute
  48. 2026-07-10 03:56 UTCVendor advisory
  49. 2026-07-10 03:56 UTCGHSA enrichment
  50. 2026-07-10 00:10 UTCEG score recompute
  51. 2026-07-10 00:10 UTCVendor advisory
  52. 2026-07-10 00:09 UTCGHSA enrichment
  53. 2026-07-09 20:24 UTCEG score recompute
  54. 2026-07-09 20:24 UTCVendor advisory
  55. 2026-07-09 20:24 UTCGHSA enrichment
  56. 2026-07-09 16:37 UTCEG score recompute
  57. 2026-07-09 16:37 UTCVendor advisory
  58. 2026-07-09 16:37 UTCGHSA enrichment
  59. 2026-07-09 12:51 UTCEG score recompute
  60. 2026-07-09 12:51 UTCVendor advisory
  61. 2026-07-09 12:51 UTCGHSA enrichment
  62. 2026-07-09 09:04 UTCEG score recompute
  63. 2026-07-09 09:04 UTCVendor advisory
  64. 2026-07-09 09:04 UTCGHSA enrichment
  65. 2026-07-09 05:17 UTCEG score recompute
  66. 2026-07-09 05:17 UTCVendor advisory
  67. 2026-07-09 05:17 UTCGHSA enrichment
  68. 2026-07-09 01:32 UTCEG score recompute
  69. 2026-07-09 01:32 UTCVendor advisory
  70. 2026-07-09 01:31 UTCGHSA enrichment
  71. 2026-07-08 21:43 UTCEG score recompute
  72. 2026-07-08 21:43 UTCVendor advisory
  73. 2026-07-08 21:42 UTCGHSA enrichment
  74. 2026-07-08 17:55 UTCEG score recompute
  75. 2026-07-08 17:55 UTCVendor advisory

Publicly available exploits

(9 references)

Working exploit code is in the public domain (1 Metasploit module) (3 GitHub PoCs) (4 Exploit-DB entries). Defenders should treat patch urgency accordingly — public PoCs typically lead to mass-exploitation within 24-72 hours.

  • GitHub PoC0xl0k1/CVE-2012-1823
    First seen Aug 24, 2023

    PHP CGI Argument Injection.

    Open source ↗
  • GitHub PoCUnix13/metasploitable2
    First seen Jul 5, 2019

    PHP-CGI-REMOTE_CVE-2012-1823, UnrealIRCd, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SSH bruteforce, VSFTPD2.3.4, samba CVE-2007-2447, JAVA RMI Server, distcc daemon, misconfigured NFS files, etc.

    Open source ↗
  • GitHub PoCtardummy01/oscp_scripts-1
    First seen Oct 1, 2017

    First script, pgp-cgi-cve-2012-1823 BASH script

    Open source ↗
  • Exploit-DBEDB-29316
    First seen Oct 31, 2013

    Apache + PHP < 5.3.12 / < 5.4.2 - Remote Code Execution + Scanner

    Open source ↗
  • Exploit-DBEDB-29290✓ verified
    First seen Oct 29, 2013

    Apache + PHP < 5.3.12 / < 5.4.2 - cgi-bin Remote Code Execution

    Open source ↗
  • Exploit-DBEDB-18836✓ verified
    First seen May 5, 2012

    PHP < 5.3.12 / < 5.4.2 - CGI Argument Injection

    Open source ↗
  • Exploit-DBEDB-18834✓ verified
    First seen May 4, 2012

    PHP 5.3.12/5.4.2 - CGI Argument Injection (Metasploit)

    Open source ↗
  • Metasploitexploit/multi/http/php_cgi_arg_injection✓ verified
    First seen May 3, 2012

    PHP CGI Argument Injection

    Open source ↗
  • Nucleihttp/cves/2012/CVE-2012-1823.yaml
    First seen Jan 1, 2012

    PHP CGI v5.3.12/5.4.2 Remote Code Execution

    Open source ↗

Related CVEs(same vendor + same CWE)

Frequently asked(6)

What is CVE-2012-1823?
CVE-2012-1823 is a critical vulnerability published on May 11, 2012. sapi/cgi/cgimain.c in PHP before 5.3.12 and 5.4.x before 5.4.2, when configured as a CGI script (aka php-cgi), does not properly handle query strings that lack an = (equals sign) character, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by placing command-line options in the query string,…
When was CVE-2012-1823 disclosed?
CVE-2012-1823 was first published in the National Vulnerability Database on May 11, 2012, with the most recent update on April 21, 2026. EchelonGraph re-ingests CVE updates from NVD on a 2-hour cycle, so this page reflects the latest published state.
Is CVE-2012-1823 actively exploited?
Yes. CISA added CVE-2012-1823 to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on March 25, 2022, affecting PHP PHP. KEV listing indicates confirmed exploitation in the wild; this CVE warrants immediate patching attention.
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2012-1823?
CVE-2012-1823 has a CVSS v3 base score of 9.8 (NVD).
Which products are affected by CVE-2012-1823?
CVE-2012-1823 affects PHP PHP. The full affected-products list, including version ranges and fixed versions, is shown in the Affected Packages section of this page.
How do I remediate CVE-2012-1823?
Patch to the fixed version published by the affected vendor. Where vendor advisories exist for CVE-2012-1823, EchelonGraph cross-links them in the Vendor Advisories panel below — those typically contain the canonical remediation steps, fixed version numbers, and any vendor-specific mitigations.

Dependency Blast Radius

Explore the affected products and dependency analysis for CVE-2012-1823

Explore →

Is Your Infrastructure Affected by CVE-2012-1823?

EchelonGraph automatically scans your cloud infrastructure and maps CVE exposure using blast radius analysis.

Start Free Scan →Browse All CVEs