CVE Alert: CVE-2025-12293 – SourceCodester – Point of Sales

Risk verdict

High risk with urgent remediation needed: publicly available PoC enables remote, unauthenticated SQL injection against a network-facing endpoint.

Why this matters

SQL injection can expose or corrupt POS data, including product and category information, with potential financial impact. If the affected database or server is linked to back-office systems, an attacker could pivot to broader assets and disrupt operations.

Most likely attack path

An attacker can remotely target category.php, supplying crafted input in the Category parameter to trigger SQL injection without user interaction. With network access and no authentication required, the attacker may read or modify data; lack of user interaction lowers barriers to exploitation, while PR:N suggests exploitation can occur with minimal privileges. Lateral movement is possible if the same compromised DB credentials are reused elsewhere, though the immediate impact is constrained to the database connected to the web app.

Who is most exposed

Retail POS deployments running SourceCodester Point of Sales 1.0 on internet-facing PHP/web servers, including on-premise setups or shared hosting, are most at risk. Organisations with exposed category.php endpoints and default configurations are particularly vulnerable.

Detection ideas

• Unusual or malformed requests to /category.php with SQL payload patterns.
• spikes in DB query errors or unusually long-running queries.
• Web server logs showing repeated, credential-less access attempts targeting category.php.
• WAF alerts for typical SQLi signatures (unquoted inputs, UNION/SELECT payloads).
• Anomalous data access patterns from the POS DB (e.g., bulk table reads).

Mitigation and prioritisation

• Apply vendor patch or upgrade to patched version; if unavailable, implement strict input validation and parameterised queries around category.php.
• Deploy Web Application Firewall rules to block common SQLi patterns; disable or isolate the vulnerable endpoint where feasible.
• Enforce least privilege for the POS database user; separate web app and back-office DB accounts.
• Restrict network access to the POS web server; monitor and alert on category.php traffic.
• Change-management: test patches in staging, then roll out during a maintenance window; verify logs and data integrity post- deployment.