CVE-2025-56254
📋 TL;DR
PHPGurukul Employee Leave Management System 2.1 contains an Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) vulnerability where authenticated users can manipulate the leaveid parameter in leave-details.php to access other users' leave application details. This affects all organizations using this specific version of the software.
💻 Affected Systems
- PHPGurukul Employee Leave Management System
📦 What is this software?
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
An authenticated malicious insider could access sensitive leave details of all employees, potentially exposing personal information, medical leave reasons, or confidential business operations.
Likely Case
Unauthorized viewing of other employees' leave records, leading to privacy violations and potential harassment or discrimination based on leave patterns.
If Mitigated
Minimal impact with proper access controls and monitoring in place, limited to viewing non-sensitive leave metadata.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation is straightforward - authenticated users simply need to modify the leaveid parameter in the URL. No special tools or skills required.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Version 2.2 or later
Vendor Advisory: https://phpgurukul.com/
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
1. Download latest version from PHPGurukul website. 2. Backup current installation. 3. Replace vulnerable files with patched version. 4. Test functionality.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Implement Access Control Check
allAdd server-side authorization check in leave-details.php to verify the requesting user has permission to view the specific leaveid.
Edit leave-details.php to include: session validation and user permission check before displaying leave details
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block parameter tampering attempts
- Enable detailed logging of all leave-detail access attempts and monitor for suspicious patterns
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
As authenticated user, access leave-details.php?leaveid=1, then try leaveid=2. If both show different users' data without permission errors, system is vulnerable.Check Version:
Check version in admin panel or review system documentation filesVerify Fix Applied:
After patching, attempt same test. System should return access denied or redirect when trying to access other users' leave details.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Multiple leaveid parameter values accessed by single user in short timeframe
- Access to leaveid values outside user's normal range
Network Indicators:
- HTTP requests with sequential leaveid parameters from same source
SIEM Query:
source="web_logs" AND uri="*leave-details.php*" AND (leaveid>100 OR leaveid<1) | stats count by src_ip