← Supply-Chain Attack Compendium

phpbb

Incident Summary

phpBB.com download briefly served trojanized 3.2.4 installer

On 2018-09-14, phpBB confirmed that download links on phpbb.com for the freshly-released 3.2.4 release (`phpBB-3.2.4.zip`, `phpBB-3.2.4.tar.bz2`) had been redirected to a third-party server hosting a trojanized archive containing additional code that opened a backdoor. The compromise was on the project's own site rather than the source code or build pipeline; clean files on the project's mirrors and Composer-installed copies were unaffected. phpBB pulled the malicious links within hours of discovery and rotated download URLs.

Date
2018-09-14
Category
Open Source
Target Surface
Distribution
Insertion Phase
distribution
Impact
Backdoor
Cause
Website compromise

What Was Affected

Package phpbb
LanguagePHP
ComponentApplication
Artifact typesource archive
Domain typeproject download host
Domain phpbb.com

Compromised Versions

  • phpBB 3.2.4 (downloads served 2018-09-14)

Incident Context

Attribution
Unknown attacker
Transitive
No
Observed Duration
0 days

External References

Source Data

Source record: oss/phpbb/meta.yaml