CVE-2023-25727
Published: 13 February 2023
Summary
CVE-2023-25727 is a medium-severity Cross-site Scripting (CWE-79) vulnerability in Phpmyadmin Phpmyadmin. Its CVSS base score is 5.4 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 6.9% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Deeper analysis
The vulnerability is a cross-site scripting flaw, tracked as CWE-79, that affects phpMyAdmin versions before 4.9.11 and 5.x before 5.2.1. It resides in the drag-and-drop file upload handling for .sql files and carries a CVSS 3.1 score of 5.4.
An authenticated user who already possesses a valid phpMyAdmin account can upload a specially crafted .sql file through the web interface. Successful exploitation allows the attacker to execute arbitrary script code in the context of other users' browsers, resulting in limited impacts to confidentiality and integrity while requiring user interaction.
The phpMyAdmin project addressed the issue in PMASA-2023-1 by releasing versions 4.9.11 and 5.2.1; administrators are advised to upgrade promptly. Debian has also published updated packages for its LTS distributions to incorporate the fix.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-0641
Vulnerability details
In phpMyAdmin before 4.9.11 and 5.x before 5.2.1, an authenticated user can trigger XSS by uploading a crafted .sql file through the drag-and-drop interface.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Penetration testing submits XSS payloads to web applications, detecting cross-site scripting flaws for subsequent remediation.
Validates web inputs to reject script-related content that could produce XSS.
Output validation against expected content can reject or sanitize script content in generated web pages, reducing XSS exploitability.