CVE-2025-1167: Mayurik Employee Management SQL Injection

CVE-2025-1167 Overview

A SQL injection vulnerability has been identified in Mayuri K Employee Management System. The vulnerability exists in the /hr_soft/admin/Update_User.php file, where improper handling of the id parameter allows attackers to inject malicious SQL commands. This flaw enables remote attackers with low privileges to manipulate database queries, potentially leading to unauthorized data access, modification, or deletion.

Critical Impact

Remote attackers can exploit this SQL injection vulnerability to extract sensitive employee data, modify user records, or potentially gain broader access to the underlying database system.

Affected Products

• Mayurik Employee Management System (all versions up to 192.168.70.3)

Discovery Timeline

• 2025-02-11 - CVE-2025-1167 published to NVD
• 2025-05-26 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-1167

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability is classified as SQL Injection (CWE-89) and falls under the broader category of Injection vulnerabilities (CWE-74). The flaw resides in the Update_User.php file within the administrative HR software module. When processing user update requests, the application fails to properly sanitize or parameterize the id parameter before incorporating it into SQL queries.

The exploit has been publicly disclosed, which increases the risk of exploitation in the wild. The network-accessible nature of this vulnerability means that attackers do not require physical access to the target system—they can launch attacks remotely over the network. The low privilege requirement indicates that an authenticated user with minimal permissions could exploit this flaw.

Root Cause

The root cause of this vulnerability is improper input validation and lack of parameterized queries in the Update_User.php file. The application directly concatenates user-supplied input from the id parameter into SQL statements without proper sanitization, escaping, or the use of prepared statements. This allows attackers to break out of the intended query structure and inject arbitrary SQL commands.

Attack Vector

The attack can be launched remotely over the network by authenticated users with low-level privileges. An attacker would send a crafted HTTP request to the /hr_soft/admin/Update_User.php endpoint with a malicious payload in the id parameter. The injected SQL code would then be executed by the database server with the same privileges as the application's database connection.

Typical exploitation scenarios include:

• Using UNION-based injection to extract data from other tables
• Employing boolean-based or time-based blind injection to enumerate database contents
• Leveraging stacked queries (if supported) to modify or delete data
• Potentially escalating to OS-level command execution depending on database configuration

For additional technical details, refer to the VulDB advisory.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-1167

Indicators of Compromise

• Unusual SQL error messages appearing in application or web server logs from requests to Update_User.php
• Requests to /hr_soft/admin/Update_User.php containing SQL keywords such as UNION, SELECT, OR 1=1, or single quotes in the id parameter
• Database query logs showing unexpected queries or access patterns originating from the application
• Abnormal data extraction volumes or database response times

Detection Strategies

• Implement Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block common SQL injection patterns targeting the id parameter
• Configure intrusion detection systems (IDS) to alert on requests containing SQL metacharacters to the vulnerable endpoint
• Enable detailed logging on web servers to capture full request parameters for forensic analysis
• Deploy database activity monitoring to detect anomalous query patterns

Monitoring Recommendations

• Monitor access logs for repeated or automated requests to /hr_soft/admin/Update_User.php
• Set up alerts for HTTP requests containing encoded SQL injection payloads (URL-encoded quotes, UNION statements)
• Review database audit logs for unauthorized data access or modification attempts
• Track failed authentication attempts that may indicate reconnaissance activity

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-1167

Immediate Actions Required

• Restrict network access to the Employee Management System administrative interface to trusted IP addresses only
• Implement input validation to allow only numeric values for the id parameter
• Deploy a Web Application Firewall with SQL injection protection rules
• Consider temporarily disabling the Update_User.php functionality until a patch is applied

Patch Information

At the time of this publication, no official vendor patch has been released. Organizations should monitor the vendor's official channels and the VulDB submission for updates regarding security fixes.

Workarounds

• Implement prepared statements or parameterized queries in the Update_User.php file if source code modification is possible
• Use stored procedures for database operations to limit direct SQL manipulation
• Apply network segmentation to isolate the Employee Management System from untrusted networks
• Implement strict input validation using allowlisting (whitelist) approaches for all user-supplied parameters

# Example: Apache configuration to restrict access to admin directory
<Directory "/var/www/html/hr_soft/admin">
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 10.0.0.0/8
    Allow from 192.168.1.0/24
</Directory>