Pheditor: Hardcoded default password 'admin' with no forced change enables full application compromise

QFinch assessment

Pheditor ships with a hardcoded default password admin (SHA-512 hash stored at pheditor.php:11). There is no mechanism to force a password change on first login. Any deployment using the default credentials grants an attacker full access to the file editor, file upload, and terminal features, enabling arbitrary file read/write and remote code execution.

Potential impact

Use of Hard-coded Credentials (CWE-798). The default password admin is publicly documented in the source code, trivially guessable, and there is no mechanism to force a password change on first login. This effectively grants unauthenticated remote attackers full administrator access to the application. Attacker privileges: Unauthenticated remote attacker (PR:N). Security boundary crossed: Unauthenticated → fully authenticated administrator. Confidentiality impact: High — read all files within MAINDIR and beyond (via terminal). Integrity impact: High — write/delete files, upload webshells, modify application code, execute arbitrary commands. Availability impact: High — delete files and directories, disrupt services. Suggested remediation: 1. Remove the default password — require user to set a password during installation. 2. Add a setup wizard that forces password creation on first access. 3. Add a forced password change on first login with default credentials. 4. Use passwordhash() / passwordverify() with PASSWORDBCRYPT instead of raw SHA-512.

Technical context

Tested repository: https://github.com/pheditor/pheditor Tested commit: e538f05b6faec99e5b23726bc9c17d6b57774297 (current HEAD on main) Affected version: All versions of Pheditor The password is hardcoded at pheditor.php:11: This is the SHA-512 hash of the string admin: The application displays a warning banner at pheditor.php:1956-1958 when the default password is in use, but this is only visual — there is no forced password change, no expiry, no lockout, and no setup wizard. Many deployments run with the default indefinitely. The password hash is stored as unsalted SHA-512 in the source code. The password change feature (lines 363-391) writes the new hash directly into the PHP source file, meaning anyone with read access to the source can extract it. Combined impact: With the default password, an unauthenticated attacker can authenticate and exploit the terminal RCE and file upload vulnerabilities for immediate server compromise.