shinnai has discovered a security issue in the ionCube loaders, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to bypass certain access restrictions.

The vulnerability is caused due to the ionCube loader improperly checking PHP imposed access restrictions on the "ioncube_read_file()" function e.g. through the "disable_functions" directive. This can be exploited to read arbitrary files from the local system by calling the "ioncube_read_file()" function from a PHP script.

The vulnerability is confirmed in the ionCube loader package version 3.1.32 for Windows (x86) with PHP 5.2.4. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution
The vendor recommends the usage of the "open_basedir" directive to deny access to sensitive files.

Provided and/or discovered by
shinnai

Changelog
Further details available to Secunia VIM customers

Original Advisory
http://milw0rm.com/exploits/4517

Deep Links
Links available to Secunia VIM customers