CVE-2023-43655

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Users publishing a composer.phar to a public web-accessible server where the composer.phar can be executed as a php file may be subject to a remote code execution vulnerability if PHP also has register_argc_argv enabled in php.ini. Versions 2.6.4, 2.2.22 and 1.10.27 patch this vulnerability. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should make sure register_argc_argv is disabled in php.ini, and avoid publishing composer.phar to the web as this is not best practice.

Impact

Users publishing a composer.phar to a public web-accessible server where the composer.phar can be executed as a php file may be impacted if PHP also has register_argc_argv enabled in php.ini.

Patches

2.6.4, 2.2.22 and 1.10.27 patch this vulnerability.

Workarounds

Make sure register_argc_argv is disabled in php.ini, and avoid publishing composer.phar to the web as this really should not happen.

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Users publishing a composer.phar to a public web-accessible server where the composer.phar can be executed as a php file may be subject to a remote code execution vulnerability if PHP also has register_argc_argv enabled in php.ini. Versions 2.6.4, 2.2.22 and 1.10.27 patch this vulnerability. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should make sure register_argc_argv is disabled in php.ini, and avoid publishing composer.phar to the web as this is not best practice.

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Users publishing a composer.phar to a public web-accessible server where the composer.phar can be executed as a php file may be subject to a remote code execution vulnerability if PHP also has register_argc_argv enabled in php.ini. Versions 2.6.4, 2.2.22 and 1.10.27 patch this vulnerability. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should make sure register_argc_argv is disabled in php.ini, and avoid publishing composer.phar to the web as this is not best practice.

These are all security issues fixed in the php-composer2-2.6.4-1.1 package on the GA media of openSUSE Tumbleweed.

This update for php-composer2 fixes the following issues:

• CVE-2023-43655: Fixed a remote code execution issue that could be triggered if users published a web-accessible composer.phar file (bsc#1215859).

This update for php-composer2 fixes the following issues

• CVE-2026-40176: command injection via malicious Perforce repository definition (bsc#1262254).
• CVE-2026-40261: command injection via malicious Perforce source reference/url (bsc#1262255).

Changes for php-composer2:

• version update to 2.2.27 (align with upstream LTS version)

• Security: Hardened git/hg/perforce/fossil identifier validation to ensure branch names starting with - do not cause issues (246f807b, 246f807b, 246f807b)
• Security: Fixed Perforce unescaped user input in queryP4User shell command (246f807b)
• Security: Fixed usage of insecure 3DES ciphers when ext-curl is missing (21ffece62)
• Fixed issue handling paths with = in them on Windows (#11568)

• version 2.2.26 2025-12-30

• Security: Fixed ANSI sequence injection (GHSA-59pp-r3rg-353g / CVE-2025-67746)

• version 2.2.25 2024-12-11

• Fixed deprecation notices appearing on this LTS version in case it is used on modern PHP. Modern PHP support is not guaranteed nor tested for though and the main purpose of LTS releases is legacy PHP versions support. (#12217)
• Fixed issue on plugin upgrade when it defines multiple classes (#12226)
• Fixed duplicate errors appearing in the output depending on php settings (#12214)
• Fixed InstalledVersions returning duplicate data in some instances (#12225)

• version 2.2.24 2024-06-10

• Security: Fixed command injection via malicious git branch name (GHSA-47f6-5gq3-vx9c / CVE-2024-35241)
• Security: Fixed multiple command injections via malicious git/hg branch names (GHSA-v9qv-c7wm-wgmf / CVE-2024-35242)
• Security: Fixed secure-http checks that could be bypassed by using malformed URL formats (fa3b9582c)
• Security: Fixed Filesystem::isLocalPath including windows-specific checks on linux (3c37a67c)
• Security: Fixed perforce argument escaping (3773f775)
• Security: Fixed handling of zip bombs when extracting archives (de5f7e32)
• Security: Fixed Windows command parameter escaping to prevent abuse of unicode characters with best fit encoding
• conversion (3130a7455, 04a63b324)

• version 2.2.23 2024-02-08

• Security: Fixed code execution and possible privilege escalation via compromised vendor dir contents (GHSA-7c6p-848j-wh5h / CVE-2024-24821)

• version 2.2.22 2023-09-29

• Security: Fixed possible remote code execution vulnerability if composer.phar is publicly accessible, executable as PHP, and register_argc_argv is enabled in php.ini (GHSA-jm6m-4632-36hf / CVE-2023-43655)
• Fixed authentication issue when downloading several files from private Bitbucket in parallel (#11464)
• Fixed handling of broken junctions on windows (#11550)
• Fixed loading of root aliases on path repo packages when doing partial updates (#11632)
• Fixed parsing of lib-curl-openssl version with OSX SecureTransport (#11534)
• Fixed binary proxies not being transparent when included by another PHP process and returning a value (#11454)
• Fixed support for plugin classes being marked as readonly (#11404)
• Fixed GitHub rate limit reporting (#11366)
• Fixed issue displaying solver problems with branch names containing % signs (#11359)

• version 2.2.21 2023-02-15

• Fixed extra.plugin-optional support in PluginInstaller when doing pre-install checks (#11326)

• version 2.2.20 2023-02-10

• Added extra.plugin-optional support for allow auto-disabling unknown plugins which are not critical when running non-interactive (#11315)

• version 2.2.19 2023-02-04

• Fixed URL sanitizer to handle new GitHub personal access tokens format (#11137)
• Fixed cache keys to allow _ to avoid conflicts between package names like a-b and a_b (#11229)
• Fixed handling of --ignore-platform-req with upper-bound ignores to not apply to conflict rules (#11037)
• Fixed handling of COMPOSER_DISCARD_CHANGES when set to 0

• version 2.2.18 2022-08-20

• Fixed COMPOSER_NO_DEV so it also works with require and remove's --update-no-dev (#10995)
• Fixed duplicate missing extension warnings being…

Thomas Chauchefoin discovered that Composer did not correctly handle certain arguments. An attacker could possibly use this issue to execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. (CVE-2022-24828, CVE-2023-43655)

Ed Cradock discovered that Composer did not correctly handle the exclusion of certain files. An attacker could possibly use this issue to execute arbitrary code. This issue only affected Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. (CVE-2024-24821)

Martin Haunschmid discovered that Composer did not correctly handle git branch names. An attacker could possibly use this issue to execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2024-35241)

Maciej Piechota discovered that Composer did not correctly handle VCS branch names. An attacker could possibly use this issue to execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2024-35242)