AUGUST 4, 2026
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Case File

CVE-2026-40261

HIGH · CVSS 8.8 EPSS 1.69% Public Exploit

Source: NVD + CISA KEV + EPSS (historical backfill) · Published 2026-04-15 · Last synced 2026-08-04

CyberRota Analysis

This is a high severity vulnerability with a CVSS score of 8.8. Public exploit code or proof-of-concept references have been detected in its references.

Public Exploit Signal

A public exploit, PoC, GitHub repository or Metasploit reference was detected for this CVE.

Detected Signals
exploit

Note: these links are listed for security research and verification purposes only.

CVE
CVE-2026-40261
Severity
HIGH
CVSS
8.8
EPSS
1.69%

Original NVD 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.

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