Possible Craft CMS RCE via Query-String CLI Option Injection

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Category
webserver
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-08
Updated
2026-09-08

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Execution
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Persistence

  4. Priv Esc

  5. Defense Evasion

  6. Cred Access

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects HTTP requests that inject Yii/Craft CLI options such as --templatesPath or --configPath through the query string, abusing PHP register_argc_argv on Craft CMS. This technique matches the Assetnote Craft CMS PHP footgun research where attacker-controlled argv values point to remote FTP or PHP stream wrappers to achieve remote code execution. Detecting these option strings early surfaces exploitation of the underlying command-line parsing footgun before code execution.

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Pivot detection · T1059 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.