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CVE-2009-4142

28
FAUCET Score

CVE-2009-4142 describes a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the htmlspecialchars function of PHP versions prior to 5.2.12. This flaw allows remote attackers to inject malicious scripts by crafting specific overlong UTF-8, Shift_JIS, or EUC-JP byte sequences before special characters. The vulnerability has a CVSS score of 4.3, indicating a medium attack complexity and a potential impact of partial information disclosure (XSS). While not actively exploited in the wild (KEV: No), public exploit code exists on ExploitDB, and it has a high FAUCET Risk Score of 89/100, despite minimal community discussion or media coverage.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
<= 5.2.11CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:php:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
1.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:php:1.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
2.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:php:2.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
2.0b10CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:php:2.0b10:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
3.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:php:php:3.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 2.0

4.3MEDIUM

AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Confidentiality Impact
NONE
Integrity Impact
PARTIAL
Availability Impact
NONE
Access Vector
NETWORK
Access Complexity
MEDIUM
Authentication
NONE
Exploitability Score
8.6
Impact Score
2.9
CvssVersion
2.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
6.50%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
93.0%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
ExploitDB: EDB-33414 · Dec 17, 2009
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0650 is in the 92nd percentile among its peer group of 19,956 CVEs.

Social Chatter

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

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

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

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (3)

redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3Fixed in: php-0:4.3.2-54.ent
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4Fixed in: php-0:4.3.9-3.29
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5Fixed in: php-0:5.1.6-24.el5_4.5
View patch

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2009-4142Moderate

php: htmlspecialchars() insufficient checking of input for multi-byte encodings

Oct 6, 2009

References

bugs.php.net / bug.php
lists.apple.com / archives/security-announce/2010//Mar/msg00001.html
marc.info
secunia.com / advisories/37821
Vendor Advisory
secunia.com / advisories/38648
secunia.com / advisories/40262
securitytracker.com / id
Exploit
oval.cisecurity.org / repository/search/definition/oval%3Aorg.mitre.oval%3Adef%3A10005
oval.cisecurity.org / repository/search/definition/oval%3Aorg.mitre.oval%3Adef%3A7085
support.apple.com / kb/HT4077
debian.org / security/2010/dsa-2001
php.net / ChangeLog-5.php
Patch
php.net / releases/5_2_12.php
securityfocus.com / bid/37389
Exploit
vupen.com / english/advisories/2009/3593
Vendor Advisory