CVE-2026-71248: Inventory Management System Auth Bypass

CVE-2026-71248 Overview

CVE-2026-71248 identifies two SQL injection flaws [CWE-89] in the open-source Inventory-Management-System-PHP application. The login.php file builds its authentication query through direct string concatenation of raw POST parameters, enabling authentication bypass. The delete.php file executes a DELETE query using an unsanitized GET parameter and performs no authentication check. An unauthenticated remote attacker can bypass login or delete arbitrary product records.

Critical Impact
Unauthenticated attackers can bypass authentication and delete or enumerate database contents over the network without user interaction.

Affected Products

Inventory-Management-System-PHP (open-source project hosted on GitHub)
login.php component (authentication bypass via SQL injection)
delete.php component (unauthenticated SQL injection and arbitrary record deletion)

Discovery Timeline

2026-08-05 - CVE-2026-71248 published to NVD
2026-08-05 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2026-71248

Vulnerability Analysis

The application contains two independent SQL injection defects in distinct scripts. The first flaw resides in login.php, where the authentication query is constructed with the pattern select * from user where email = '$email' and password = '$password'. The raw $email and $password values come directly from POST input with no escaping and no prepared statements. An attacker submitting email=' OR 1=1 LIMIT 1-- - causes the predicate to evaluate as true and returns the first user row, bypassing authentication entirely.

The second flaw resides in delete.php, which calls mysqli_query($db, "DELETE FROM product WHERE product_id=" . $_GET['id']). The script performs no session or authentication check and does not validate the id parameter. Any network-reachable attacker can issue arbitrary DELETE statements or use blind time-based payloads such as id=0 OR SLEEP(5) to extract data.

Root Cause

Both defects stem from failure to separate SQL code from user-controlled data. The developer used string concatenation instead of parameterized queries or prepared statements. The delete.php endpoint additionally lacks any authorization gate before executing a destructive operation.

Attack Vector

Exploitation requires only network access to the application. For login bypass, an attacker sends a crafted POST request to login.php with a tautology payload in the email field. For record deletion or data exfiltration, an attacker sends a GET request to delete.php with an injected id parameter. No credentials, tokens, or user interaction are required.

See the GitHub Project Repository and GitHub Pull Request #3 for source and remediation context.

Detection Methods for CVE-2026-71248

Indicators of Compromise

Web server access logs containing POST requests to login.php with URL-encoded tautologies such as %27%20OR%201%3D1 in the email field.
GET requests to delete.php with non-numeric or boolean payloads in the id parameter, including SLEEP, UNION, OR, or comment sequences such as -- -.
Successful logins for the first user row in the user table originating from unfamiliar source IPs.
Unexpected reductions in the product table row count without corresponding administrative activity.

Detection Strategies

Deploy signature and anomaly rules in a web application firewall to flag SQL metacharacters in login.php and delete.php parameters.
Enable MySQL general query logging and alert on DELETE FROM product statements arriving without an authenticated session context.
Correlate authentication events with source IP reputation and geolocation to surface bypass attempts.

Monitoring Recommendations

Monitor for repeated 200-response POST /login.php events where the request body contains single quotes or SQL keywords.
Track baseline row counts for the product table and alert on unexpected deletions.
Ingest web and database logs into a centralized analytics pipeline to correlate injection patterns across endpoints.

How to Mitigate CVE-2026-71248

Immediate Actions Required

Remove the application from network exposure until code fixes are deployed.
Rewrite login.php and delete.php to use mysqli or PDO prepared statements with bound parameters.
Add an authenticated session check and role verification to delete.php before executing any database mutation.
Rotate credentials for any account that may have been accessed through the authentication bypass.

Patch Information

No vendor security advisory is available. Remediation guidance is tracked in the GitHub Pull Request #3 against the upstream repository. Operators running forks or deployments must apply the parameterized-query changes manually and validate that authorization checks precede destructive database operations.

Workarounds

Place the application behind a web application firewall with rules that block SQL injection patterns in email, password, and id parameters.
Restrict access to delete.php at the web server layer using Require or allow/deny directives limited to authenticated administrative source ranges.
Cast the id parameter server-side using intval($_GET['id']) as a stopgap before applying full parameterization.
Enforce least-privilege on the MySQL account used by the application to prevent destructive operations from non-admin flows.

bash

# Configuration example: block obvious SQLi payloads at the reverse proxy (nginx)
location ~* /(login|delete)\.php$ {
    if ($args ~* "(union|sleep\(|or\s+1=1|--\s|/\*)") { return 403; }
    if ($request_body ~* "(union|sleep\(|or\s+1=1|--\s|/\*)") { return 403; }
    proxy_pass http://php_backend;
}