CVE-2026-2179: Hospital Management System SQLi Vulnerability

CVE-2026-2179 Overview

A SQL injection vulnerability has been identified in PHPGurukul Hospital Management System version 4.0. The vulnerability exists in the /admin/manage-users.php file, where improper handling of the ID parameter allows attackers to inject malicious SQL commands. This flaw enables remote attackers with administrative privileges to manipulate database queries, potentially leading to unauthorized data access, data modification, or data deletion.

Critical Impact

Authenticated attackers with administrative access can exploit this SQL injection vulnerability to read, modify, or delete sensitive patient and hospital data stored in the database.

Affected Products

• PHPGurukul Hospital Management System 4.0
• phpgurukul hospital_management_system (cpe:2.3:a:phpgurukul:hospital_management_system:4.0:::::::*)

Discovery Timeline

• 2026-02-08 - CVE-2026-2179 published to NVD
• 2026-02-10 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2026-2179

Vulnerability Analysis

This SQL injection vulnerability (CWE-74: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component) affects the user management functionality in PHPGurukul Hospital Management System. The vulnerable endpoint /admin/manage-users.php fails to properly sanitize user-supplied input passed through the ID parameter before incorporating it into SQL queries.

The attack requires network access and administrative privileges on the application. When exploited, an attacker can manipulate the database queries to extract sensitive information, modify records, or potentially delete data. Given the healthcare context of this application, the impact could include exposure of protected health information (PHI), patient records, and administrative credentials.

A proof-of-concept for this vulnerability has been publicly disclosed, increasing the risk of exploitation in the wild.

Root Cause

The root cause of this vulnerability is insufficient input validation and the lack of parameterized queries (prepared statements) in the PHP code handling the ID parameter within the /admin/manage-users.php file. The application directly concatenates user-supplied input into SQL query strings without proper sanitization or escaping, allowing injection of arbitrary SQL commands.

Attack Vector

The attack is network-based and requires the attacker to have administrative privileges on the Hospital Management System. The exploitation process involves:

1. An authenticated administrator accesses the /admin/manage-users.php endpoint
2. The attacker manipulates the ID parameter to include malicious SQL syntax
3. The unsanitized input is directly incorporated into the SQL query
4. The injected SQL commands execute against the backend database
5. The attacker can then extract data, modify records, or perform other unauthorized database operations

The vulnerability can be exploited to bypass application logic, extract sensitive patient and hospital data, modify user privileges, or potentially gain access to additional system resources depending on the database configuration and permissions.

Detection Methods for CVE-2026-2179

Indicators of Compromise

• Unusual SQL error messages appearing in application logs from /admin/manage-users.php
• Anomalous database queries containing SQL keywords (UNION, SELECT, DROP, etc.) in the ID parameter
• Unexpected database access patterns or bulk data retrieval from user-related tables
• Web server logs showing requests to /admin/manage-users.php with malformed ID parameter values

Detection Strategies

• Implement Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to detect SQL injection patterns in HTTP requests
• Monitor database query logs for suspicious query structures originating from the application
• Deploy intrusion detection systems (IDS) with signatures for SQL injection attack patterns
• Enable application-level logging to capture and alert on malformed input parameters

Monitoring Recommendations

• Review web server access logs for requests to /admin/manage-users.php with encoded or unusual characters in the ID parameter
• Set up alerts for database errors that may indicate SQL injection attempts
• Monitor for unauthorized data exports or unusual database read patterns
• Implement real-time alerting for any changes to administrative user accounts

How to Mitigate CVE-2026-2179

Immediate Actions Required

• Restrict access to the administrative interface (/admin/) to trusted IP addresses only
• Implement input validation on the ID parameter to accept only numeric values
• Deploy a Web Application Firewall with SQL injection protection enabled
• Audit recent access logs to /admin/manage-users.php for potential exploitation attempts

Patch Information

No official vendor patch has been identified at this time. Organizations using PHPGurukul Hospital Management System 4.0 should contact PHP Gurukul directly for remediation guidance or consider implementing the workarounds listed below.

For additional technical details, refer to the GitHub PoC Repository and the VulDB entry #344882.

Workarounds

• Implement prepared statements (parameterized queries) in the /admin/manage-users.php file to properly handle the ID parameter
• Add server-side input validation to ensure the ID parameter contains only integer values
• Restrict administrative access to the application via IP whitelisting at the network or web server level
• Consider placing the application behind a reverse proxy with SQL injection filtering capabilities

The following configuration can help restrict access to the administrative interface:

# Apache .htaccess configuration to restrict admin access
<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>