CVE-2025-59943
📋 TL;DR
phpMyFAQ versions 4.0-nightly-2025-10-03 and below allow multiple user accounts to be registered with the same email address due to missing uniqueness enforcement. This creates account ambiguity that can lead to privilege escalation or account takeover when email is used for password resets or administrative functions. All users running affected versions are impacted.
💻 Affected Systems
- phpMyFAQ
📦 What is this software?
Phpmyfaq by Phpmyfaq
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
An attacker creates multiple accounts with a victim's email, intercepts password reset emails, gains administrative access, and takes over legitimate user accounts or the entire system.
Likely Case
Multiple accounts with identical emails cause confusion in password resets and notifications, potentially allowing unauthorized access to user accounts.
If Mitigated
With proper email verification and monitoring, impact is limited to minor administrative confusion without security compromise.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires only standard user registration access. No special tools or skills needed.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 4.0.13
Vendor Advisory: https://github.com/thorsten/phpMyFAQ/security/advisories/GHSA-9wj2-4hcm-r74j
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
1. Backup your phpMyFAQ installation and database. 2. Download version 4.0.13 from the official repository. 3. Replace existing files with the new version. 4. Verify the update completed successfully.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Disable User Registration
allTemporarily disable new user registration to prevent exploitation while planning upgrade.
Edit configuration to disable registration feature
Database-Level Email Uniqueness
allAdd unique constraint to email column in user database table.
ALTER TABLE faquserdata ADD UNIQUE (email);
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement manual review process for all new user registrations
- Enable multi-factor authentication for all administrative functions
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Attempt to register two user accounts with the same email address. If both succeed, the system is vulnerable.Check Version:
Check phpMyFAQ admin dashboard or view includes/constants.php for version informationVerify Fix Applied:
After patching, attempt duplicate email registration - it should fail with an error message.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Multiple user registrations with same email address
- Failed login attempts followed by password reset requests
Network Indicators:
- Unusual registration patterns from single IP addresses
SIEM Query:
source="phpmyfaq" AND (event="user_registration" AND email_count>1)