CVE-2016-6613 — phpmyadmin
MEDIUMCVE-2016-6613 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Information Exposure vulnerability in phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin. A fix is available for phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin — see the affected versions and patch details below.
phpMyAdmin Local file exposure through symlinks with UploadDir
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin🐘phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin🐘phpmyadmin/phpmyadminReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
An issue was discovered in phpMyAdmin. A user can specially craft a symlink on disk, to a file which phpMyAdmin is permitted to read but the user is not, which phpMyAdmin will then expose to the user. All 4.6.x versions (prior to 4.6.4), 4.4.x versions (prior to 4.4.15.8), and 4.0.x versions (prior to 4.0.10.17) are affected.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin | ≥ 4.6&&< 4.6.4 | 4.6.4composer require phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin:^4.6.4 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin | ≥ 4.4&&< 4.4.15.8 | 4.4.15.8composer require phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin:^4.4.15.8 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin | ≥ 4.0&&< 4.0.10.17 | 4.0.10.17composer require phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin:^4.0.10.17 |
Affected Products
phpmyadminphpmyadminDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin to 4.6.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2016-6613 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-6613 in your dependencies?
Find it across Packagist, including transitive dependencies.