CVE-2026-40261Composer has Command Injection via Malicious Perforce Reference
- 8.8HighCVSS base score
- 1.7%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 22% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Versions 1.0 through 2.2.26 and 2.3 through 2.9.5 contain a command injection vulnerability in the Perforce::syncCodeBase() method, which appends the $sourceReference parameter to a shell command without proper escaping, and additionally in the Perforce::generateP4Command() method as in GHSA-wg36-wvj6-r67p / CVE-2026-40176, which interpolates user-supplied Perforce connection parameters (port, user, client) from the source url field without proper escaping. An attacker can inject arbitrary commands through crafted source reference or source url values containing shell metacharacters, even if Perforce is not installed. Unlike CVE-2026-40176, the source reference and url are provided as part of package metadata, meaning any compromised or malicious Composer repository can serve package metadata declaring perforce as a source type with malicious values. This vulnerability is exploitable when installing or updating dependencies from source, including the default behavior when installing dev-prefixed versions. This issue has been fixed in Composer 2.2.27 (2.2 LTS) and 2.9.6 (mainline). If developers are unable to immediately update, they can avoid installing dependencies from source by using --prefer-dist or the preferred-install: dist config setting, and only use trusted Composer repositories as a workaround.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 5 days later
· 5 days later
Published
- 3 months later
· 3 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High8.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| redhat-SADPADP (enrichment) | 3.1 | High8.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High8.8 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 1.7% · top 22% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 8.8.
Affected products
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Packagistcomposer/composerGHSA-gqw4-4w2p-838q (opens in a new tab)
References
References6
- https://github.com/composer/composer/security/advisories/GHSA-gqw4-4w2p-838q (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.9.6 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-40261 (opens in a new tab)vdb-entryx_refsource_REDHAT
- RHBZ#2458841 (opens in a new tab)issue-trackingx_refsource_REDHAT
- https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-40261.json (opens in a new tab)x_sadp-csaf-vex
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:8165 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_refsource_REDHAT
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-23119 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-gqw4-4w2p-838q (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-40261)Record last updated .