Laravel 4 Eloquent: Models Using $guarded Open to Mass Assignment

Published as "Laravel Risk of mass-assignment vulnerabilities"

medium Laravel Laravel framework · Last reviewed Nov 10, 2026

CVE: No CVE assigned
GHSA: GHSA-rj3w-99gc-8j58
Packagist: PKSA-11c9-dxsr-yqjb
Reported: May 15, 2024

Can let users set model columns you meant to protect in Laravel 4 apps that use $guarded and pass request input to update or save.

Affected and fixed versions

In laravel/framework. Find the row for the version you run, and update to the release next to it.

If you run	Update to	Support
4.0.0 – 4.1.28	4.1.29

Upgrade

Run the line for the branch you are on.

composer require laravel/framework:^4.1.29

What this means

Users could set database columns you meant to protect by adding extra fields to the data they send. This is called mass assignment: your app copies more of a user's input onto a model than you intended.

Laravel 4.1.29 fixed it by improving how column names are quoted for every database driver. See the Laravel 4.1.29 upgrade notes and the fix.

Who is affected

Apps on laravel/framework 4.0 or 4.1 before 4.1.29 with Eloquent models that protect columns with $guarded, and that pass a user-controlled array to update(), save() or similar methods.

Laravel says models that list their allowed columns with $fillable aren't affected.

What to do

Update to 4.1.29. If you can't, listing allowed columns with $fillable on your models is the setup Laravel describes as safe.

Laravel 4 stopped getting fixes long ago, so plan a move to a supported version.

Check your app with an agent

Paste this into a coding agent that can read your project, such as Claude Code, Codex or Amp. It checks your composer.lock against the versions above and tells you what to update, without changing anything.

Check whether the PHP project you have access to is affected by this security advisory, and tell me what to update. Do a read-only check: don't edit files, don't run composer update or composer require, and don't try to reproduce the flaw.

Advisory: Laravel 4 Eloquent: Models Using $guarded Open to Mass Assignment (GHSA-rj3w-99gc-8j58)
Details: https://phpnews.net/security/laravel/ghsa-rj3w-99gc-8j58

Affected versions, as Composer constraints:
- laravel/framework: >=4.0.0,<4.1.29

Fixed releases:
- 4.0.0 – 4.1.28: update to 4.1.29

1. Find every composer.lock in the project outside vendor/ (a monorepo can have one per app) and read the installed version of each package above. Packages installed as dependencies of other packages count too.
2. Compare each installed version with its constraint: "|" separates alternative ranges, and "," means both bounds apply.
3. For each affected install, read "What this means" at https://phpnews.net/security/laravel/ghsa-rj3w-99gc-8j58 and check whether the project meets the conditions it describes (a feature in use, a config value, a driver). Say which conditions you could check and which you couldn't.
4. Report a table: lock file | package | installed version | affected (yes, no or unknown) | conditions met (yes, no or unknown) | update to | evidence. For each affected package, give the command that would fix it, without running it: composer update <package> --with-dependencies when it is only installed as a dependency of another package, or composer require with the fixed version when composer.json requires it directly. If the installed version is on a branch with no fixed release listed, say it needs a move to a newer branch.

Sources

GitHub advisory GHSA-rj3w-99gc-8j58 →

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