GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p — composer/composer
HIGHGHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in composer/composer. A fix is available for composer/composer — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Composer has a command injection via malicious perforce repository
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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-wg36-wvj6-r67p.
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
GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p 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 377,636 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
composer/composer🐘composer/composerReal-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
Impact
The Perforce::generateP4Command() method constructed shell commands by interpolating user-supplied Perforce connection parameters (port, user, client) without proper escaping. An attacker controlling a repository configuration in a malicious composer.json declaring a Perforce VCS repository could inject arbitrary commands through these values, leading to command execution in the context of the user running Composer. Composer would execute these injected commands even if Perforce is not installed.
VCS repositories are only loaded from the root composer.json file located in the directory you execute Composer commands in and from the composer config directory (e.g. ~/.config/composer/composer.json). So this vulnerability cannot be exploited through composer.json files of packages installed as dependencies.
You are at risk of command execution if you run Composer commands on untrusted projects with attacker supplied composer.json files, regardless of whether you or any of your dependencies use Perforce.
Patches
Fixed in Composer 2.2.27 (2.2 LTS) and 2.9.6 (mainline)
Workarounds
- Carefully inspect composer.json files before running Composer on them. Verify that Perforce-related fields contain valid values.
- Only run Composer commands on projects from trusted sources.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | composer/composer | ≥ 2.3.0&&< 2.9.6 | 2.9.6composer require composer/composer:^2.9.6 |
| 🐘Packagist | composer/composer | ≥ 1.0.0&&< 2.2.27 | 2.2.27composer require composer/composer:^2.2.27 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for composer/composer, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update composer/composer to 2.9.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p 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 GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p. 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.
To exploit this vulnerability, a user needs to run Composer commands on untrusted projects with attacker-supplied composer.json files. VCS repositories are only loaded from the root composer.json or the composer config directory, so this issue cannot be exploited through composer.json files of packages installed as…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Hardened Images | composer-main-2.9.7-1.hum1 | RHSA-2026:8165 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p across Packagist dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.