PHPMyAdmin is installed on many shared hosting systems to help customers manage databases for PHP applications. As a result, the security hole may be attractive to hackers, as the program’s location on a system can be easily learned, and PHPMyAdmin provides access to a wide variety of web applications based on MySQL databases, including blogs, forums and content management systems.

The potential impact of the limited by the fact that it only affects version 2.7.0, which was released last week. Users who upgraded to 2.7.0 promptly are vulnerable, while systems running older versions of the software are not affected.