That being said, I found a publicly known vulnerability related to XAMPP for Windows, version 7.4.6.
A flaw in processing incomplete HTTP requests can crash the server. Analysis of the CVE-2024-4577 RCE Exploit xampp for windows 746 exploit
On a secure XAMPP install, they would see a "403 Forbidden" error. On a vulnerable 7.4.6 Windows install, they were presented with the phpMyAdmin login screen – but here’s the catch: That being said, I found a publicly known
If you're looking for more specific information, try searching with these terms: On a vulnerable 7
Crafting the Payload: The attacker constructs a URL containing specifically encoded characters that, when processed by Windows, will be interpreted as a dash followed by a PHP configuration directive. A common target is the auto_prepend_file
The core of the vulnerability lies in the ability to upload and execute arbitrary code. In a default installation of XAMPP 1.7.3, the web server often runs with high privileges—sometimes even as the SYSTEM user—rather than a restricted user account intended for web services. Furthermore, older versions of PHP utilized in this stack had configurations (such as safe_mode being off) that allowed for the execution of system commands via PHP functions like exec() or system() .