These show that a fully patched phpMyAdmin is important, but an exposed, unpatched instance is a disaster waiting to happen.
The application improperly sanitizes the target parameter in core files, allowing an authenticated user to include arbitrary files from the server filesystem. Exploitation Steps phpmyadmin hacktricks
If the web root is writable and MySQL has file privileges, this grants remote code execution instantly. These show that a fully patched phpMyAdmin is
Check $cfg['AllowArbitraryServer'] = true; in config.inc.php – allows attacker to connect to external MySQL servers. but an exposed
Example:
When default configurations or basic SQL injections are not enough, unpatched phpMyAdmin installations may be vulnerable to specific Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). CVE-2018-12613: Local File Inclusion (LFI) to RCE : 4.8.0 to 4.8.1