CVE-2024-10739: E-Health Care System SQLi Vulnerability

CVE-2024-10739 Overview

A SQL injection vulnerability has been discovered in code-projects E-Health Care System 1.0. This vulnerability affects the admin login functionality located in the /Admin/adminlogin.php file. The vulnerability allows remote attackers to inject malicious SQL commands through the email and admin_pswd parameters, potentially compromising the entire healthcare database system and gaining unauthorized administrative access.

Critical Impact

Remote attackers can bypass authentication and gain unauthorized administrative access to the E-Health Care System, potentially exposing sensitive patient health records and system configurations.

Affected Products

• Anisha E-Health Care System 1.0
• code-projects E-Health Care System 1.0

Discovery Timeline

• 2024-11-03 - CVE-2024-10739 published to NVD
• 2024-11-05 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2024-10739

Vulnerability Analysis

This SQL injection vulnerability (CWE-89) affects the administrative login page of the E-Health Care System. The application fails to properly sanitize user-supplied input in the authentication form before incorporating it into SQL queries. When a user submits login credentials through the /Admin/adminlogin.php endpoint, the email and admin_pswd parameters are directly concatenated into SQL statements without proper parameterization or input validation.

The vulnerability is particularly concerning in a healthcare context, as exploitation could lead to unauthorized access to protected health information (PHI), patient records, and administrative functions. While initially reported as affecting only the email parameter, security analysis indicates that the admin_pswd parameter is equally vulnerable to SQL injection attacks.

Root Cause

The root cause of this vulnerability is improper input validation and the absence of parameterized queries (prepared statements) in the PHP authentication code. The application directly incorporates user-controlled string input into SQL queries, creating a classic SQL injection attack surface. This represents a fundamental secure coding failure where dynamic SQL query construction is used instead of safe database access patterns.

Attack Vector

The attack can be launched remotely over the network without requiring any authentication or user interaction. An attacker can craft malicious HTTP POST requests to the /Admin/adminlogin.php endpoint with specially crafted SQL syntax in the email or admin_pswd form fields. Common exploitation techniques include:

• Authentication bypass using SQL injection payloads such as ' OR '1'='1 in the email field
• Union-based injection to extract sensitive data from the database
• Time-based blind SQL injection to enumerate database contents
• Stacked queries to modify or delete database records (depending on database configuration)

The exploit has been publicly disclosed, increasing the risk of active exploitation. Technical details are available through the GitHub CVE SQL Injection Details advisory.

Detection Methods for CVE-2024-10739

Indicators of Compromise

• Unusual SQL error messages in web server logs referencing /Admin/adminlogin.php
• HTTP POST requests to /Admin/adminlogin.php containing SQL keywords such as UNION, SELECT, OR, or comment characters (--, #)
• Multiple failed login attempts followed by a successful authentication from the same IP address
• Database query logs showing malformed or suspicious queries originating from the admin login function

Detection Strategies

• Deploy Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block SQL injection patterns in POST parameters
• Implement intrusion detection signatures for common SQL injection payloads targeting the email and admin_pswd parameters
• Monitor authentication logs for anomalous admin login patterns and authentication bypass indicators
• Enable verbose database logging to capture and alert on suspicious query patterns

Monitoring Recommendations

• Configure real-time alerting for SQL syntax errors in application logs
• Establish baseline metrics for admin login activity and alert on deviations
• Monitor for data exfiltration patterns that may indicate successful database compromise
• Implement network traffic analysis to detect large data transfers from the database server

How to Mitigate CVE-2024-10739

Immediate Actions Required

• Take the E-Health Care System offline or restrict access to the /Admin/adminlogin.php endpoint until a patch is applied
• Implement a Web Application Firewall (WAF) with SQL injection protection rules as an interim measure
• Review database and application logs for evidence of prior exploitation
• Rotate all administrative credentials and database passwords as a precautionary measure
• Restrict network access to the admin login page to trusted IP addresses only

Patch Information

No official vendor patch has been identified in the available CVE data. Organizations using this software should contact Code Projects for remediation guidance. As this is a code-projects demonstration application, custom code fixes implementing prepared statements should be developed and applied. Additional vulnerability details are available through VulDB #282908.

Workarounds

• Implement input validation and sanitization on all user-supplied parameters at the application level
• Replace dynamic SQL queries with parameterized queries (prepared statements) using PDO or MySQLi in PHP
• Deploy a reverse proxy or WAF with SQL injection filtering capabilities in front of the application
• Implement IP-based access restrictions to limit admin panel access to authorized networks only
• Consider disabling the vulnerable admin login functionality entirely until proper remediation is available

# Example: Apache mod_rewrite rule to restrict admin access by IP
# Add to .htaccess in the Admin directory
<Files "adminlogin.php">
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 192.168.1.0/24
    Allow from 10.0.0.0/8
</Files>