PHP7 Vulnerability that allows hackers to hijack web servers

The PHP programming language that powers most of the Internet based appications. It is used in the popular content management systems like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, so it’s a big issue  whenever someone identify a security vulnerability within it.

A few days a ago, Emil ‘Neex’ Lerner, a Russian security expert, published a remote-code execution vulnerability in PHP version 7.

With this vulnerability,  an attacker could force a remote web server to execute their own random code just by entering a crafted URL. The attacker only needs to add “?a=” to the website address, followed by their code payload.

This attack makes it very easy to  start hacking a website,  so that even a non-technical user could abuse it.

Fortunately, the vulnerability only affects servers using the NGINX web server with the PHP-FPM extension. PHP-FPM is a modded version of FastCGI, with a several additional features intended for websites with high traffic.

Due to the availability of public sample ( POC) code and the extreme simplicity of exploiting this bug, website owners are advised to check server settings and update PHP as soon as possible if they run the vulnerable configuration.

Read More at : ZDNET