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No exploitation reported

CVE-2019-9859

No exploitation reported by the sources we read.

  • Published2020-03-10
  • WeaknessCWE-78

Am I affected?

With a domain, we read the version its public headers and pages expose. A distribution build can carry the fix under an older number.

Description

Vesta Control Panel (VestaCP) 0.9.7 through 0.9.8-23 is vulnerable to an authenticated command execution that can result in remote root access on the server. The platform works with PHP as the frontend language and uses shell scripts to execute system actions. PHP executes shell script through the dangerous command exec. This function can be dangerous if arguments passed to it are not filtered. Every user input in VestaCP that is used as an argument is filtered with the escapeshellarg function. This function comes from the PHP library directly and its description is as follows: "escapeshellarg() adds single quotes around a string and quotes/escapes any existing single quotes allowing you to pass a string directly to a shell function and having it be treated as a single safe argument." It means that if you give Username, it will have 'Username' as a replacement. This works well and protects users from exploiting this potentially dangerous exec function. Unfortunately, VestaCP uses this escapeshellarg function incorrectly in several places.

Timeline

dates in UTC
  1. 2020-03-1013:15CVE publishedNVD

Versions per branch

NVD
Vestacp vesta control panel
BranchAffectedFixed in
0.9≥ 0.9.7-0, ≤ 0.9.8-23no fix published

as publishedRanges as NVD and OSV publish them; a distribution’s build can be fixed under an older number.

Fix

No fix published by the sources we read yet. NVD record

Detection

Nuclei template
none so far
ProjectDiscovery
Exploit-DB
no entry
Exploit-DB
Proof of concept
Metasploit modules
none listed
Metasploit Framework

Sources

Identifiers

Technical details

CVSS v3 Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Published
2020-03-10
Last Modified
2026-06-17
NVD status
Modified
GitHub Advisory
GHSA-4fq8-68gc-cjqm

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-9859?

Vesta Control Panel (VestaCP) 0.9.7 through 0.9.8-23 is vulnerable to an authenticated command execution that can result in remote root access on the server. The platform works with PHP as the frontend language and uses shell scripts to execute system actions. PHP executes shell script through the dangerous command exec. This function can be dangerous if arguments passed to it are not filtered. Every user input in VestaCP that is used as an argument is filtered with the escapeshellarg function. This function comes from the PHP library directly and its description is as follows: "escapeshellarg() adds single quotes around a string and quotes/escapes any existing single quotes allowing you to pass a string directly to a shell function and having it be treated as a single safe argument." It means that if you give Username, it will have 'Username' as a replacement. This works well and protects users from exploiting this potentially dangerous exec function. Unfortunately, VestaCP uses this escapeshellarg function incorrectly in several places.

Is CVE-2019-9859 actively exploited?

Active exploitation of CVE-2019-9859 has not been confirmed. Its EPSS score was 3.0% on 2026-11-08, the estimated probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2019-9859?

CVE-2019-9859 has a CVSS v3 base score of 8.8 (HIGH severity), with vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

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