Adminer PHP Object Injection issue leads to Denial of ServiceGHSA-mqh4-2mm8-g7w9
HIGHGHSA-mqh4-2mm8-g7w9 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.6) Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in vrana/adminer. The records list no fixed version yet; check the vendor advisory below and apply the mitigations in the meantime.
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-mqh4-2mm8-g7w9.
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
vrana/adminerReal-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
Adminer 4.8.1, when using Monolog for logging, allows a Denial of Service (memory consumption) via a crafted serialized payload (e.g., using s:1000000000), leading to a PHP Object Injection issue. Remote, unauthenticated attackers can trigger this by sending a malicious serialized object, which forces excessive memory usage, rendering Adminer’s interface unresponsive and causing a server-level DoS. While the server may recover after several minutes, multiple simultaneous requests can cause a complete crash requiring manual intervention.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | vrana/adminer | all versions | No fix |
Affected Products
admineradminerDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for vrana/adminer, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
The records we use list no patched version of vrana/adminer for GHSA-mqh4-2mm8-g7w9. Check the maintainer's advisory, and where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range.
Mitigate without a patch
Do not deserialise data from untrusted sources: where the format allows it, restrict deserialisation to an explicit allowlist of expected types, and prefer a data-only format (JSON, Protobuf) over one that can reconstruct arbitrary objects until you can upgrade.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-mqh4-2mm8-g7w9 in your dependencies?
Find it across Packagist, including transitive dependencies.