GHSA-p4h7-p9rj-2pq2

Summary

Pheditor ships with a hardcoded default password admin (SHA-512 hash stored at pheditor.php:11). There is no mechanism to force a password change on first login. Any deployment using the default credentials grants an attacker full access to the file editor, file upload, and terminal features, enabling arbitrary file read/write and remote code execution.

Details

Tested repository: https://github.com/pheditor/pheditor

Tested commit: e538f05b6faec99e5b23726bc9c17d6b57774297 (current HEAD on main)

Affected version: All versions of Pheditor

The password is hardcoded at pheditor.php:11:

define('PASSWORD', 'c7ad44cbad762a5da0a452f9e854fdc1e0e7a52a38015f23f3eab1d80b931dd472634dfac71cd34ebc35d16ab7fb8a90c81f975113d6c7538dc69dd8de9077ec');

This is the SHA-512 hash of the string admin:

echo -n 'admin' | sha512sum
c7ad44cbad762a5da0a452f9e854fdc1e0e7a52a38015f23f3eab1d80b931dd472634dfac71cd34ebc35d16ab7fb8a90c81f975113d6c7538dc69dd8de9077ec

The application displays a warning banner at pheditor.php:1956-1958 when the default password is in use, but this is only visual — there is no forced password change, no expiry, no lockout, and no setup wizard. Many deployments run with the default indefinitely.

The password hash is stored as unsalted SHA-512 in the source code. The password change feature (lines 363-391) writes the new hash directly into the PHP source file, meaning anyone with read access to the source can extract it.

Combined impact: With the default password, an unauthenticated attacker can authenticate and exploit the terminal RCE and file upload vulnerabilities for immediate server compromise.

PoC

Environment: Any system running Pheditor with default configuration.

Setup:

git clone https://github.com/pheditor/pheditor /tmp/pheditor-test
cd /tmp/pheditor-test
php -S localhost:8080 pheditor.php &

Positive trigger — authenticate with default password:

curl -s -c...