CVE-2025-1905: Remyandrade Employee Management System XSS

CVE-2025-1905 Overview

CVE-2025-1905 is a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in SourceCodester Employee Management System version 1.0, developed by remyandrade. The flaw resides in employee.php, where the Full Name parameter is rendered without proper output encoding. Attackers can inject arbitrary JavaScript that executes in the browser of any user who views the affected page. The exploit has been publicly disclosed, and additional parameters in the same file may be affected. The issue is tracked under CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation.

Critical Impact
Authenticated attackers can inject persistent JavaScript through the Full Name field, enabling session theft, credential harvesting, and unauthorized actions in the context of other application users.

Affected Products

SourceCodester Employee Management System 1.0
remyandrade employee_management_system package
The employee.php component and potentially related input handlers

Discovery Timeline

2025-03-04 - CVE-2025-1905 published to NVD
2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-1905

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability is a stored or reflected cross-site scripting flaw in the employee record management workflow. When a user submits data through employee.php, the Full Name argument is written back to the response without HTML entity encoding or input sanitization. Any script payload supplied in that field executes when the record is rendered in a victim's browser.

Exploitation requires low-privilege authenticated access and some user interaction, such as viewing the crafted employee record. The public disclosure of the technique lowers the barrier for opportunistic abuse against exposed instances. The current EPSS estimate places likelihood of exploitation activity at 0.335% (26th percentile).

Root Cause

The root cause is missing output encoding on user-controlled data. The application accepts arbitrary characters, including <, >, and quote characters, in the Full Name field. It stores or reflects that data directly into HTML context without invoking a contextual encoder. This is a textbook CWE-79 pattern.

Attack Vector

An authenticated attacker submits an employee record with a JavaScript payload embedded in the Full Name argument. When another authenticated user, such as an administrator or HR reviewer, opens the record, the payload executes in that user's session. The attacker can then exfiltrate cookies, pivot within the admin console, or perform CSRF-style actions using the victim's privileges. See the GitHub XSS Vulnerability Report and VulDB entry #298425 for the disclosed proof of concept.

No verified exploit code is available for direct inclusion. Refer to the linked disclosure for payload details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-1905

Indicators of Compromise

HTTP POST or GET requests to employee.php containing <script>, onerror=, onload=, or javascript: substrings in the Full Name parameter or related fields.
Database rows in the employees table with HTML tags or encoded script fragments stored in the name column.
Outbound HTTP requests from browser sessions to attacker-controlled domains immediately after loading an employee record view.

Detection Strategies

Deploy a web application firewall (WAF) signature that inspects request bodies to employee.php for common XSS payload patterns and blocks or logs them.
Enable web server access logging with full query string capture and review for suspicious characters in employee-related endpoints.
Run authenticated dynamic application security testing (DAST) scans against the application to identify unencoded reflection points.

Monitoring Recommendations

Alert on anomalous JavaScript execution in browsers accessing the admin interface, using Content Security Policy (CSP) violation reports.
Monitor for privilege-context browser activity, such as unexpected form submissions or account changes shortly after viewing employee records.
Track database write operations that store HTML markup in text fields intended for names.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-1905

Immediate Actions Required

Restrict network exposure of the Employee Management System 1.0 instance to trusted internal networks or VPN-gated access until a fix is applied.
Audit existing employee records for stored script payloads and sanitize or delete any suspicious entries.
Rotate session cookies and administrative credentials if the application has been reachable from untrusted networks.

Patch Information

No vendor patch has been published in the referenced advisories at the time of NVD update. Consult the SourceCodester project page and the VulDB record for any subsequent fixes. If no patch is issued, apply source-level remediation: validate the Full Name input against an allowlist and apply contextual HTML encoding (for example, htmlspecialchars($name, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8') in PHP) on every output location.

Workarounds

Implement a strict Content Security Policy that disallows inline scripts and restricts script sources to trusted origins.
Place the application behind a WAF configured with XSS rule sets, such as the OWASP Core Rule Set, and enable blocking mode.
Retire the application if it is not business-critical, since Employee Management System 1.0 is a small-project codebase without a formal security response process.

bash

# Example nginx configuration to add a restrictive Content Security Policy
# Place inside the server block fronting the Employee Management System
add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'; object-src 'none'; base-uri 'self'; frame-ancestors 'none';" always;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
add_header X-Frame-Options "DENY" always;