CVE-2025-52410: Institute-of-Current-Students SQLi

CVE-2025-52410 Overview

CVE-2025-52410 is a critical time-based blind SQL injection vulnerability affecting Institute-of-Current-Students v1.0, a PHP-based student management application. The vulnerability exists in the mydetailsstudent.php endpoint where the myds GET parameter is not adequately sanitized before being used in SQL queries, allowing unauthenticated attackers to extract sensitive database information or manipulate the underlying database.

Critical Impact
This SQL injection vulnerability allows unauthenticated remote attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands, potentially leading to complete database compromise, unauthorized data access, data manipulation, and possible system takeover.

Affected Products

Vishalmathur Institute-of-Current-Students v1.0

Discovery Timeline

2025-11-20 - CVE-2025-52410 published to NVD
2025-12-12 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-52410

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability is classified as CWE-89 (Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command), commonly known as SQL Injection. The application fails to properly validate and sanitize user-supplied input in the myds GET parameter before incorporating it into SQL queries executed against the backend database.

The time-based blind nature of this injection means attackers cannot directly observe query results in the application response. Instead, they must infer information by causing conditional delays in database responses using SQL functions like SLEEP() or BENCHMARK(). While this makes exploitation slower than error-based or union-based SQL injection, it remains highly effective for extracting sensitive data including credentials, student records, and other confidential information stored in the database.

Root Cause

The root cause of this vulnerability is the direct use of unsanitized user input from the myds GET parameter in SQL query construction. The mydetailsstudent.php endpoint concatenates user-supplied values directly into SQL statements without implementing proper input validation, parameterized queries, or prepared statements. This fundamental secure coding oversight allows malicious SQL syntax to be interpreted and executed by the database engine.

Attack Vector

The attack is network-accessible and requires no authentication or user interaction. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by crafting malicious HTTP GET requests to the mydetailsstudent.php endpoint with specially crafted payloads in the myds parameter.

A typical exploitation approach involves injecting time-delay conditions into the parameter. For example, an attacker might submit a value that causes the database to pause execution for several seconds when a condition is true, thereby confirming the injection point and beginning data extraction. Tools such as SQLMap can automate this exploitation process, systematically extracting database contents one character at a time by measuring response delays.

The attacker can enumerate database schemas, extract table contents, access sensitive student information, and potentially gain administrative credentials stored in the database. In worst-case scenarios, depending on database configuration and privileges, this could lead to command execution on the underlying server.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-52410

Indicators of Compromise

Unusual patterns in web server access logs showing requests to mydetailsstudent.php with abnormal or encoded myds parameter values
HTTP requests containing SQL-specific keywords such as SLEEP, BENCHMARK, WAITFOR, IF(), or CASE WHEN in URL parameters
Abnormally slow response times for requests to the vulnerable endpoint indicating time-based injection attempts
Database query logs showing syntax errors or unexpected query structures involving the student details functionality

Detection Strategies

Deploy Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block SQL injection patterns in GET parameters targeting the mydetailsstudent.php endpoint
Implement intrusion detection signatures that identify time-based SQL injection payloads in HTTP traffic
Monitor database query logs for anomalous query patterns, particularly those containing conditional time-delay functions
Use runtime application self-protection (RASP) solutions to detect SQL injection attempts at the application layer

Monitoring Recommendations

Enable detailed access logging on web servers and review logs for suspicious request patterns targeting PHP endpoints
Configure database audit logging to track all queries executed against student-related tables
Set up alerts for abnormal response time spikes on the mydetailsstudent.php endpoint
Monitor network traffic for automated SQL injection tool signatures such as SQLMap user-agent strings

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-52410

Immediate Actions Required

Remove or disable access to the mydetailsstudent.php endpoint until a proper fix can be implemented
Implement network-level access controls to restrict access to the application to trusted IP ranges only
Deploy a Web Application Firewall with SQL injection detection rules as an interim protective measure
Review database access logs for signs of exploitation and rotate all database credentials if compromise is suspected

Patch Information

At the time of publication, no official vendor patch has been released for this vulnerability. Security researchers have documented the issue in a GitHub Issue Discussion on the project repository. Organizations using this software should monitor the project repository for updates and consider implementing the workarounds below until an official fix is available.

Workarounds

Replace direct SQL query construction with parameterized queries or prepared statements using PDO or MySQLi with bound parameters
Implement strict input validation on the myds parameter to accept only expected formats (e.g., numeric student IDs)
Apply the principle of least privilege to database accounts used by the application, restricting them from administrative operations
Consider disabling the vulnerable functionality entirely until proper code remediation can be performed

bash

# Example: Restrict access to vulnerable endpoint using Apache .htaccess
<Files "mydetailsstudent.php">
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    # Allow only from trusted management IPs
    Allow from 192.168.1.0/24
</Files>