Predictive Vulnerability Intelligence.

Product

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Documentation

Company

  • About
  • Partnerships
  • Blog
  • Support

Legal

  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Data Licensing

© 2026 FAUCET Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

CVE-2020-28948

43
FAUCET Score

CVE-2020-28948 is an unserialization vulnerability in Archive_Tar versions through 1.4.10, affecting products like Debian, Drupal, and PHP, due to insufficient blocking of the "PHAR:" protocol. This high-severity vulnerability (CVSS 7.8) has a low attack complexity and can lead to complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability if a user is tricked into interacting with a malicious archive. While not listed in KEV, it has known exploits, as evidenced by Drupal's emergency patches and extensive media coverage, indicating significant community and media attention.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
< 1.4.11CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:archive_tar:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
9.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
10.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
32CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:32:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
33CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:33:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

7.8HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
1.8
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
47.49%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
98.7%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.4749 is in the 99th percentile among its peer group of 11,617 CVEs.

Social Chatter

No social media mentions found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.2 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (7)

composerpatch availablevia ghsa
Product: pear/archive_tarFixed in: 1.4.11
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Fixed in: php-pear-1:1.9.4-23.el7_9
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Fixed in: php:7.4-8060020220907094815.5caa48ff
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Extended Update SupportFixed in: php:7.4-8040020220907095003.d7c09045
View patch
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Fixed in: php:7.2/php-pear
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Fixed in: php:7.3/php-pear
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Software CollectionsFixed in: rh-php73-php-pear

Vendor Advisories (2)

composerGHSA-jh5x-hfhg-78jqhigh

Deserialization of Untrusted Data in Archive_Tar

Apr 22, 2021
redhatCVE-2020-28948Moderate

Archive_Tar: allows an unserialization attack because phar: is blocked but PHAR: is not blocked

Nov 19, 2020

References

github.com / pear/Archive_Tar/issues/33
ExploitIssue TrackingThird Party Advisory
lists.debian.org / debian-lts-announce/2020/11/msg00045.html
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
lists.fedoraproject.org / archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/42GPGVVFTLJYAKRI75IVB5R45NYQGEUR
lists.fedoraproject.org / archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/4V35LBRM6HBCXBVCITKQ4UEBTXO2EG7B
lists.fedoraproject.org / archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/5KSFM672XW3X6BR7TVKRD63SLZGKK437
lists.fedoraproject.org / archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/KWM4CTMEGAC4I2CHYNJVSROY4CVXVEUT
lists.fedoraproject.org / archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/NBYZSHYTIOBK6V7C4N7TP6KIKCRKLVWP
lists.fedoraproject.org / archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VJQQYDAOWHD6RDITDRPHFW7WY6BS3V5N
security.gentoo.org / glsa/202101-23
Third Party Advisory
debian.org / security/2020/dsa-4817
Third Party Advisory
drupal.org / sa-core-2020-013
Third Party Advisory