CVE-2026-41570PHPUnit: Argument injection via newline in PHP INI values forwarded to child processes

Official description

PHPUnit is a testing framework for PHP. In versions 12.5.21 and 13.1.5, PHPUnit forwards PHP INI settings to child processes (used for isolated/PHPT test execution) as -d name=value command-line arguments without neutralizing INI metacharacters. Because PHP's INI parser interprets " as a string delimiter, ; as the start of a comment, and most importantly a newline as a directive separator, a value containing a newline is parsed by the child process as multiple INI directives. An attacker able to influence a single INI value can therefore inject arbitrary additional directives into the child's configuration, including auto_prepend_file, extension, disable_functions, open_basedir, and others. Setting auto_prepend_file to an attacker-controlled path yields remote code execution in the child process. This issue has been patched in versions 12.5.22 and 13.1.6.

Affected packages & fixed versions

Affected products (as reported)

References

• https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit/security/advisories/GHSA-qrr6-mg7r-m243 x_refsource_CONFIRM
• https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit/pull/6592 x_refsource_MISC