GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87

Improper validation of select fields allows attackers to craft an input that crashes the system, resulting in a 500 status and making the entire site and administration panel unavailable.
This clearly impacts the Availability aspect of the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, and availability), although the attack still has certain limitations.

Details

The attack involves injecting any invalid user role value. Doing this will change the users data in a way that prevents users and then the entire site from loading. Even though the actual data change is minimal, the error is unrecoverable until a valid role parameter is restored by direct modification of the user account file.
Proper validation of select fields will prevent extraneous valid from being accepted and making the entire site and administration panel unavailable.

The condition for this attack is having high privileges or Admin access, which means it could be exploited by an Insider Threat. Alternatively, if an attacker gains access to a privileged user account, they can execute the attack as well.
Overall, the attack is relatively difficult to carry out, but if successful, the impact and damage would be significant.

GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87 has a CVSS score of 8.2 (High). The vector is network-reachable, high privileges required, and no user interaction. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (2.0.0-beta.4); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.

Kodem intelligence

• Formwork 2.x (d9f0c1f) adds proper validation to select fields.

1. What is GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87? GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87 is a high-severity security vulnerability in getformwork/formwork (composer), affecting versions >= 2.0.0-beta.1, < 2.0.0-beta.4. It is fixed in 2.0.0-beta.4.
2. How severe is GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87? GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87 has a CVSS score of 8.2 (High). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
3. Which versions of getformwork/formwork are affected by GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87? getformwork/formwork (composer) versions >= 2.0.0-beta.1, < 2.0.0-beta.4 is affected.
4. Is there a fix for GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87? Yes. GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87 is fixed in 2.0.0-beta.4. Upgrade to this version or later.
5. Is GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
6. What actually determines whether GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
7. How do I fix GHSA-C85W-X26Q-CH87? Upgrade getformwork/formwork to 2.0.0-beta.4 or later.

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