Don't Call That "Protected" Method: Dissecting an N-Day vBulletin RCE 👤 by Egidio Romano The article analyzes a critical Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution vulnerability (CVE-2025-48827) in vBulletin, which becomes exploitable when running on PHP 8.1 or newer. The vulnerability stems from vBulletin’s misuse of ReflectionMethod::invoke(), which in PHP 8.1+ no longer blocks access to protected methods by default. As a result, attackers can remotely trigger sensitive internal functions originally meant to be inaccessible and achieve code execution on the server. 📝 Contents: ● The Vulnerability ● The vBulletin Vulnerability ● Exploiting vBulletin: Path to Pre-Auth RCE ● Conclusion https://karmainsecurity.com/dont-call-that-protected-method-vbulletin-rce