Executive brief
Composer, a widely used dependency manager for the PHP programming language, contains a flaw that can lead to the accidental exposure of GitHub authentication tokens. When using certain GitHub Actions tokens that contain hyphens, the software fails to validate them correctly and may print the full, sensitive token into system logs or error consoles. If these logs are accessible to unauthorized individuals or stored in public continuous integration (CI) environments, it could allow attackers to hijack GitHub sessions and access private code repositories.
Technical details
A vulnerability in Composer's `BaseIO::loadConfiguration()` method arises from an overly restrictive regular expression (`^[.A-Za-z0-9_]+
Affected products
- Composer Composer < 1.10.28, >= 2.0.0 < 2.2.28, >= 2.3.0 < 2.9.8
Timeline
- 2026-05-13: patched: Fixes merged into branches 1.10, 2.2, and 2.9
- 2026-07-15: disclosed: CVE-2026-45793 published
References
- https://github.com/composer/composer/commit/3f5e7f9fbfa541137d6d1d5643ec3b718e9d5039
- https://github.com/composer/composer/commit/65e6390c49f1a11cd8b660d81822086db51fe2d1
- https://github.com/composer/composer/commit/e66c8fdb7ff5409bd2f358c5f194038e49e93714
- https://github.com/composer/composer/pull/12853
- https://github.com/composer/composer/pull/12855
- https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/1.10.28
- https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.2.28