CWE-616

Variant Abstraction Level
Pillar — Highest-level weakness category
Class — Abstract, language-independent
Base — Specific enough to detect
Variant — Tied to specific technology
Compound — Requires multiple weaknesses Incomplete MITRE CWE Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development, may change
Incomplete — Partially defined by MITRE
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CWE
Incomplete Identification of Uploaded File Variables (PHP)

Description

The PHP application uses an old method for processing uploaded files by referencing the four global variables that are set for each file (e.g. $varname, $varname_size, $varname_name, $varname_type). These variables could be overwritten by attackers, causing the application to process unauthorized files.

These global variables could be overwritten by POST requests, cookies, or other methods of populating or overwriting these variables. This could be used to read or process arbitrary files by providing values such as "/etc/passwd".

Consequences

Confidentiality, Integrity — Read Files or Directories, Modify Files or Directories

Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Use PHP 4 or later.

Phase: Architecture and Design

If you must support older PHP versions, write your own version of is_uploaded_file() and run it against $HTTP_POST_FILES['userfile']))

Phase: Implementation

For later PHP versions, reference uploaded files using the $HTTP_POST_FILES or $_FILES variables, and use is_uploaded_file() or move_uploaded_file() to ensure that you are dealing with an uploaded file.