CVE-2026-76212
An unauthenticated attacker can submit such characters in the public FAQ search form to force maximally broad pattern matches and expensive sequential scans, resulting in a denial of service.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.43%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
phpMyFAQ before 4.1.7, when configured to use PostgreSQL via the native pgsql PHP extension, declares an incorrect LIKE ESCAPE character ('=') in the Search/Database/Pgsql.php backend while escapeLikeWildcards() escapes user input with the '|' prefix. As a result, wildcard escaping is a no-op and user-supplied % and _ characters remain active LIKE wildcards. An unauthenticated attacker can submit such characters in the public FAQ search form to force maximally broad pattern matches and expensive sequential scans, resulting in a denial of service. The PDO PostgreSQL backend is not affected, and quotes remain escaped so this does not enable quote-breaking SQL injection or data exfiltration.
- CVSS 4.0
- 6.9 MEDIUMCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.43% probability · 37th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-88
- Affected
- phpmyfaq/phpmyfaq
- Source
- disclosure@vulncheck.com
EPSS 0.4% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- https://github.com/thorsten/phpMyFAQ/security/advisories/GHSA-5hx6-c293-588hExploit, Mitigation, Vendor Advisory
- https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/phpmyfaq-before-like-wildcard-injection-via-postgresqlThird Party Advisory
- https://github.com/thorsten/phpMyFAQ/security/advisories/GHSA-5hx6-c293-588hExploit, Mitigation, Vendor Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.