phpMyAdmin: Multiple vulnerabilities

Background

phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL databases from a web-browser.

Description

phpMyAdmin contains several security issues:

• Maksymilian Arciemowicz has discovered multiple variable injection vulnerabilities that can be exploited through “$cfg” and “GLOBALS” variables and localized strings
• It is possible to force phpMyAdmin to disclose information in error messages
• Failure to correctly escape special characters

Impact

By sending a specially-crafted request, an attacker can include and execute arbitrary PHP code or cause path information disclosure. Furthermore the XSS issue allows an attacker to inject malicious script code, potentially compromising the victim’s browser. Lastly the improper escaping of special characters results in unintended privilege settings for MySQL.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All phpMyAdmin users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-db/phpmyadmin-2.6.1_p2-r1"