CVE-2018-7251 — anchorcms/anchor-cms
CRITICALCVE-2018-7251 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Information Exposure vulnerability in anchorcms/anchor-cms. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for anchorcms/anchor-cms — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Anchor CMS Logs Credentials
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-2018-7251 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE sits: patch-first territory.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,166 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
anchorcms/anchor-cmsReal-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 config/error.php in Anchor 0.12.3. The error log is exposed at an errors.log URI, and contains MySQL credentials if a MySQL error (such as "Too many connections") has occurred.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | anchorcms/anchor-cms | all versions | 0.12.7composer require anchorcms/anchor-cms:^0.12.7 |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
AnchorCMS < 0.12.3a - Information Disclosure
by Tijme Gommers · Oct 3, 2019
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for anchorcms/anchor-cms, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update anchorcms/anchor-cms to 0.12.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2018-7251 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-2018-7251 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2018-7251. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
How to detect CVE-2018-7251
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2018-7251 -u https://target- Template
- Anchor CMS 0.12.3 - Error Log Exposure
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- An attacker can gain access to sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, and system configuration details.
- Remediation
- Upgrade to the latest version of Anchor CMS or apply the necessary patches to fix the error log exposure vulnerability.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (pdteam), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2018-7251 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2018-7251 across Packagist dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.