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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2004-1315 in the critical feed json

viewtopic.php in phpBB 2.x before 2.0.11 improperly URL decodes the highlight parameter when extracting words and phrases to highlight, whi…

published 2004-11-12 21 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2004-1312

cvss
7.5
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
72.5%
EPSS 72.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.4%
public exploits
5
Metasploit, Exploit-DB

Summary

viewtopic.php in phpBB 2.x before 2.0.11 improperly URL decodes the highlight parameter when extracting words and phrases to highlight, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary PHP code by double-encoding the highlight value so that special characters are inserted into the result, which is then processed by PHP exec, as exploited by the Santy.A worm.

Patch / fix

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-24274)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

72.54% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.4% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • Metasploit exploit/unix/webapp/phpbb_highlight phpBB viewtopic.php Arbitrary Code Execution metasploit exploit, excellent rank, 2004-11-12
  • EDB-24274 phpBB 2.0.x - 'viewtopic.php' PHP Script Injection webapps, 2004-07-12
  • EDB-16890 phpBB - 'viewtopic.php' Arbitrary Code Execution (Metasploit) webapps, 2010-07-03
  • EDB-12510 PHP-Nuke 7.0/8.1/8.1.35 - Wormable Remote Code Execution webapps, 2010-05-05
  • EDB-647 phpBB 2.0.10 - Remote Command Execution webapps, 2004-11-22

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.