Overview
CVE-2025-32969 is a severe security vulnerability discovered in the XWiki platform, a widely used generic wiki software. This vulnerability threatens the security and integrity of organizations that utilize the XWiki platform and could potentially lead to a system compromise or data leakage. Given the severity score of 9.8 out of 10 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), it is crucial for affected organizations to understand the implications of this vulnerability and take immediate steps to mitigate its risks.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-32969
Severity: Critical (9.8)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
No phone number, email, or personal info required.
Product | Affected Versions
XWiki | 1.8 to 15.10.16, 16.4.6, 16.10.1
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability lies in the ability for an unauthenticated remote user to escape from the HQL (Hibernate Query Language) execution context and perform a blind SQL injection. Despite security measures to prevent unregistered users from viewing or editing pages, this vulnerability allows an attacker to execute arbitrary SQL statements on the database backend. Depending on the database backend used, the attacker may not only gain access to confidential information such as password hashes but also execute UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE queries, potentially leading to system compromise or data leakage.
Conceptual Example Code
This is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited, a hypothetical HTTP request with an SQL injection payload:
POST /xwiki/bin/view/Main/ HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
id=1%27+UNION+SELECT+1,2,group_concat(username,0x3a,password)+FROM+xwikircsuser%27--In this example, the malicious payload `id=1%27+UNION+SELECT+1,2,group_concat(username,0x3a,password)+FROM+xwikircsuser%27–` is an SQL injection that retrieves usernames and password hashes from the `xwikircsuser` table.
Recommendations
Given the high severity of this vulnerability, it is strongly recommended to upgrade to versions 16.10.1, 16.4.6, or 15.10.16 of XWiki, where this issue has been patched. As there is no known workaround, organizations that are unable to upgrade immediately should consider deploying a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as a temporary measure to mitigate the risk.