Actively exploited vulnerability
Craft CMS: vulnerability flaw under attack
CVE-2025-35939 · Craft CMS External Control of Assumed-Immutable Web Parameter Vulnerability
What is affected
Craft CMS is mostly run by companies, schools and public bodies, not on home computers. You are unlikely to have it yourself, but organisations that hold your data may. Breaches that start with flaws like this one are how personal data ends up leaked.
Craft CMS contains an external control of assumed-immutable web parameter vulnerability. This vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated client to introduce arbitrary values, such as PHP code, to a known local file location on the server. This vulnerability could be chained with CVE-2024-58136 as represented by CVE-2025-32432.
What an attacker can do
This is a vulnerability flaw. It lets an attacker misuse the product in a way its maker did not intend. CISA lists it because attackers are confirmed to be using it against real systems.
- How it is reached
- Over the internet or network
- Access the attacker needs
- No account needed
- Does the victim have to do something?
- No, works without the victim doing anything
What to do
- At home: nothing to install. Keep your own devices updated and use a different password for every service, so that a breach at one organisation does not open your other accounts.
- If you administer Craft CMS at work: apply the vendor's fix or mitigation now and review logs for signs of compromise, because the flaw was being exploited before it was listed.
- If the product is past its support date and no fix exists, take it off the internet or retire it.
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions, follow applicable BOD 22-01 guidance for cloud services, or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
Vendor advisories and fixes
- github.comgithub.com/craftcms/cms/pull/17220
How urgent is it
CISA added this vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue on June 2, 2025, which means there is reliable evidence of attacks in the wild. US federal agencies must fix it by June 23, 2025, a deadline that has already passed. That deadline does not bind anyone else, but it shows how seriously the agency rates it.
The EPSS model estimates a 1.3% probability that this flaw will be exploited somewhere in the next 30 days. That is higher than 71% of all scored vulnerabilities.
Its CVSS severity score is 6.9 out of 10 (medium), as recorded in the US National Vulnerability Database.
Technical description
Craft CMS stores arbitrary content provided by unauthenticated users in session files. This content could be accessed and executed, possibly using an independent vulnerability. Craft CMS redirects requests that require authentication to the login page and generates a session file on the server at '/var/lib/php/sessions'. Such session files are named 'sess_[session_value]', where '[session_value]' is provided to the client in a 'Set-Cookie' response header. Craft CMS stores the return URL requested by the client without sanitizing parameters. Consequently, an unauthenticated client can introduce arbitrary values, such as PHP code, to a known local file location on the server. Craft CMS versions 5.7.5 and 4.15.3 have been released to address this issue.