CVE-2018-25342: Smartshop 1 SQL Injection Vulnerability

CVE-2018-25342 Overview

CVE-2018-25342 is a time-based blind SQL injection vulnerability in Smartshop 1, an open-source e-commerce application. The flaw resides in the search.php script, where the searched GET parameter is concatenated into a SQL query without sanitization. Unauthenticated remote attackers can inject payloads such as SLEEP() to infer database contents one bit at a time. Successful exploitation discloses product records, user data, and other backend information stored in the underlying database. The issue maps to CWE-89: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command.

Critical Impact

Unauthenticated attackers can extract arbitrary database contents from Smartshop 1 over the network with no user interaction required.

Affected Products

• Smartshop 1 (open-source e-commerce application by smakosh)
• All distributions sourced from the Smartshop GitHub repository archive
• Deployments referenced in the Behance Smartshop project listing

Discovery Timeline

• 2026-05-23 - CVE-2018-25342 published to the National Vulnerability Database
• 2026-05-26 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2018-25342

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability is a time-based blind SQL injection in the search functionality of Smartshop 1. The search.php endpoint accepts a user-supplied searched parameter via HTTP GET and embeds the value directly into a backend SQL query. Because the application performs no parameterization or input validation, attackers can append arbitrary SQL syntax to the executing statement.

In the blind variant, the application does not return query output or distinct error messages to the client. Attackers instead supply conditional time-delay payloads, observing HTTP response latency to determine whether injected boolean expressions evaluate to true. This allows byte-by-byte extraction of database contents through automated requests.

A public proof-of-concept is catalogued as Exploit-DB entry 44823, and the issue is documented in the VulnCheck SQL Injection advisory for Smartshop.

Root Cause

The root cause is the direct concatenation of unsanitized user input into a SQL statement inside search.php. The application does not use prepared statements, parameterized queries, or any form of context-aware encoding. Any character supplied in the searched parameter, including quotes, comments, and SQL functions, reaches the database engine intact.

Attack Vector

The attack is delivered over the network via a single HTTP GET request to the vulnerable search.php endpoint. No authentication, privileges, or user interaction are required. An attacker supplies a searched value that closes the original literal, appends a conditional SLEEP() or BENCHMARK() call, and measures the server response time. By iterating across character positions and ASCII values, attackers reconstruct table names, column names, and record contents such as administrative credentials and customer data.

No verified code examples are available for inclusion. Refer to the Exploit-DB submission for the original proof-of-concept request format.

Detection Methods for CVE-2018-25342

Indicators of Compromise

• HTTP GET requests to /search.php containing SQL keywords such as SLEEP, BENCHMARK, UNION, SELECT, or AND 1=1 in the searched query parameter.
• Repeated requests to search.php from a single source address with incrementing payload lengths consistent with automated extraction.
• Web server response times for search.php that spike to multiples of an injected delay value.
• Database process lists showing long-running queries originating from the Smartshop application user.

Detection Strategies

• Inspect web server access logs for URL-encoded SQL metacharacters (%27, %20OR%20, SLEEP() in requests to the search endpoint.
• Deploy a web application firewall rule that matches SQL injection signatures against the searched parameter.
• Correlate elevated response latency on search.php with request volume to identify time-based probing.

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable MySQL or MariaDB general query logging to capture the full SQL text executed by Smartshop and flag statements containing SLEEP or BENCHMARK.
• Monitor outbound data volume from the database host for anomalies indicative of bulk extraction.
• Alert on repeated 200-status requests to search.php exceeding a baseline rate per source IP.

How to Mitigate CVE-2018-25342

Immediate Actions Required

• Restrict public access to search.php using network ACLs or authentication until a fix is applied.
• Place the Smartshop deployment behind a web application firewall with SQL injection signatures enabled in blocking mode.
• Audit the database account used by Smartshop and remove unnecessary privileges such as FILE, CREATE, and access to non-application schemas.

Patch Information

No official vendor patch is referenced in the advisory data. Smartshop 1 is distributed as source code from the project repository; operators must remediate the codebase locally by replacing string-concatenated queries in search.php with parameterized statements using PDO or MySQLi prepared statements.

Workarounds

• Rewrite the affected query in search.php to use prepared statements with bound parameters, eliminating literal concatenation of $_GET['searched'].
• Apply server-side input validation that rejects non-alphanumeric characters in the searched parameter before query construction.
• If code changes are not feasible, disable the search feature by removing or returning early from search.php.
• Migrate to a maintained e-commerce platform, as Smartshop 1 appears to lack ongoing security maintenance.

# Example WAF rule (ModSecurity) to block SQLi patterns on the searched parameter
SecRule ARGS:searched "@rx (?i)(sleep\s*\(|benchmark\s*\(|union\s+select|--|';)" \
    "id:1002518,phase:2,deny,status:403,log,msg:'CVE-2018-25342 Smartshop SQLi attempt'"