Vulnerability in Phpseclib

CVE-2026-40194

phpseclib is a PHP secure communications library. Starting in 0.1.1 and prior to 3.0.51, 2.0.53, and 1.0.28, phpseclib\Net\SSH2::get_binary_packet() uses PHP's != operator to compare a received SSH packet HMAC against the locally computed HMAC. != on equal-length binary strings in PHP uses memcmp(), which short-circuits on the first differing byte. This is a real variable-time comparison (CWE-208), proven by scaling benchmarks. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.0.51, 2.0.53, and 1.0.28.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 3.7 (Low). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.004 (28.0th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 28th percentile — 28.0% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-40194: held from 0.004 to 0.004.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.004 · newest: 0.004 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • Phpseclib — versions >= 3.0.0, < 3.0.51, >= 2.0.0, < 2.0.53, >= 0.1.1, < 1.0.28

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-40194?
CVE-2026-40194 is a low-severity vulnerability in Phpseclib, classified under CWE-208. CVSS score: 3.7/10. Published 2026-04-10.
How severe is CVE-2026-40194?
Low severity. CVSS v3 base score is 3.7 out of 10.