CVE-2017-18264 — phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
CRITICALCVE-2017-18264 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) vulnerability in phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin. A fix is available for phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin — see the affected versions and patch details below.
phpMyAdmin Improper Privilege Management
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2017-18264 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin🐘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 libraries/common.inc.php in phpMyAdmin 4.0 before 4.0.10.20, 4.4.x, 4.6.x, and 4.7.0 prereleases. The restrictions caused by $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = false are bypassed under certain PHP versions (e.g., version 5). This can allow the login of users who have no password set even if the administrator has set $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] to false (which is also the default). This occurs because some implementations of the PHP substr function return false when given '' as the first argument.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin | ≥ 4.0&&< 4.0.10.20 | 4.0.10.20composer require phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin:^4.0.10.20 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin | ≥ 4.7.0-beta1&&< 4.7.0 | 4.7.0composer require phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin:^4.7.0 |
| 🐘Packagist | phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin | ≥ 4.4.0 | No fix |
| 🐘Packagist | phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin | ≥ 4.6.0 | No fix |
Detection & 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 4.0.10.20 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2017-18264 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2017-18264 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2017-18264. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2017-18264 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2017-18264 across Packagist dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.