CVE-2025-70152: Scholars Tracking System SQLi Vulnerability

CVE-2025-70152 Overview

CVE-2025-70152 is a critical SQL Injection vulnerability affecting code-projects Community Project Scholars Tracking System 1.0. The vulnerability exists in the admin user management endpoints /admin/save_user.php and /admin/update_user.php, which lack authentication checks and directly concatenate user-supplied POST parameters into SQL queries without validation or parameterization. This allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands against the backend database.

Critical Impact

Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this SQL Injection vulnerability to compromise the entire database, extract sensitive data, modify records, or potentially gain command execution on the underlying server.

Affected Products

• code-projects Community Project Scholars Tracking System 1.0
• Affected endpoints: /admin/save_user.php
• Affected endpoints: /admin/update_user.php

Discovery Timeline

• 2026-02-18 - CVE CVE-2025-70152 published to NVD
• 2026-02-19 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-70152

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability represents a compound security failure combining two critical weaknesses: missing authentication controls and SQL Injection (CWE-89). The affected endpoints /admin/save_user.php and /admin/update_user.php are intended for administrative user management operations but fail to verify whether the requesting user has administrative privileges before processing requests.

More critically, user-supplied POST parameters including firstname, lastname, username, password, and user_id are directly concatenated into SQL queries without any input validation, sanitization, or use of parameterized queries. This classic SQL Injection pattern allows attackers to manipulate the structure of database queries, potentially extracting, modifying, or deleting data from the database.

The network-accessible nature of this vulnerability combined with no authentication requirements means any remote attacker can exploit this flaw without any prerequisites.

Root Cause

The root cause is twofold: first, the administrative endpoints lack proper authentication and authorization checks, allowing any user to access them. Second, the application constructs SQL queries through direct string concatenation of user input rather than using prepared statements or parameterized queries. This failure to implement defense-in-depth security measures exposes the application to trivial exploitation.

Attack Vector

The attack vector is network-based, requiring no authentication or user interaction. An attacker can send crafted HTTP POST requests directly to the vulnerable endpoints /admin/save_user.php or /admin/update_user.php with malicious SQL payloads embedded in the firstname, lastname, username, password, or user_id parameters. Since these parameters are concatenated directly into SQL statements, the injected SQL code executes with the privileges of the database user.

The vulnerability allows various SQL Injection techniques including UNION-based attacks to extract data from other tables, time-based blind injection for data exfiltration when direct output is not visible, and stacked queries for database modification or command execution depending on the database configuration.

For technical details on the exploitation methodology, refer to the GitHub advisory for CVE-2025-70152.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-70152

Indicators of Compromise

• Unusual HTTP POST requests to /admin/save_user.php or /admin/update_user.php from unauthenticated sessions
• SQL syntax errors or unexpected database error messages in application logs
• POST parameters containing SQL keywords such as UNION, SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, or comment sequences like -- and /*
• Database query logs showing anomalous queries with injected payloads

Detection Strategies

• Implement Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block SQL Injection patterns in POST parameters targeting the affected endpoints
• Monitor web server access logs for requests to /admin/save_user.php and /admin/update_user.php from IP addresses without valid authenticated sessions
• Deploy database activity monitoring to detect unusual query patterns or unauthorized data access attempts
• Configure intrusion detection systems (IDS) with signatures for common SQL Injection payloads

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable verbose logging on the web application and database server to capture request parameters and executed queries
• Set up alerts for failed authentication attempts followed by direct access to administrative endpoints
• Monitor for data exfiltration patterns such as unusually large response sizes or multiple sequential requests to administrative endpoints
• Review database user activity logs for queries executed outside of normal application patterns

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-70152

Immediate Actions Required

• Remove or restrict network access to the affected application until patches are applied
• Implement authentication checks on /admin/save_user.php and /admin/update_user.php endpoints
• Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) with SQL Injection protection rules as an interim measure
• Review database and application logs for signs of prior exploitation

Patch Information

No official vendor patch has been identified in the available data. Organizations using the Scholars Tracking System should contact code-projects for remediation guidance or consider the following code-level fixes:

1. Implement proper authentication and authorization checks on all administrative endpoints
2. Replace all dynamic SQL query construction with prepared statements using parameterized queries
3. Validate and sanitize all user input before processing

Refer to the Code Projects PHP System page for the latest version information.

Workarounds

• Restrict access to the /admin/ directory using web server access controls (IP whitelisting or HTTP Basic Authentication)
• Deploy a reverse proxy or WAF to filter SQL Injection attempts before they reach the application
• If feasible, disable the save_user.php and update_user.php endpoints until proper fixes are implemented
• Isolate the database server and limit network connectivity to only necessary application servers

# Apache .htaccess workaround to restrict admin directory access
# Place in /admin/.htaccess
<Directory "/var/www/html/admin">
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 192.168.1.0/24
    Allow from 10.0.0.0/8
</Directory>