Overview
This post provides an in-depth analysis of the critical vulnerability, CVE-2025-54785, related to SuiteCRM, an open-source, enterprise-ready Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software application. This vulnerability affects versions 7.14.6 and 8.8.0 of the software and could potentially lead to a system compromise or data leakage if exploited. The significance of this vulnerability lies in the fact that SuiteCRM’s widespread use makes it a lucrative target for cybercriminals, who could exploit this vulnerability for privilege escalation, sensitive data exposure, Denial of Service (DoS), cryptomining, and ransomware attacks.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-54785
Severity: Critical (CVSS: 8.8)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: Required
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
SuiteCRM | 7.14.6
SuiteCRM | 8.8.0
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability arises from the lack of input validation/sanitization before passing user-supplied data to the unserialize function. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending specially crafted data to the affected application. When this malicious input is unserialized, it could result in arbitrary code execution. This execution could grant the attacker elevated privileges, expose sensitive data, cause a Denial of Service, or lead to cryptomining and ransomware activities.
Conceptual Example Code
Below is a conceptual example of how this vulnerability might be exploited. This example assumes an HTTP request to a vulnerable endpoint on a SuiteCRM server.
POST /vulnerable/endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/json
{ "malicious_payload": "a:2:{i:0;s:5:\"hello\";i:1;s:3:\"world\";}" }In this example, a serialized array with the string ‘hello’ and ‘world’ is sent as the payload. In a real-world scenario, the attacker would replace this payload with serialized malicious code.
Mitigation and Prevention
The vendor has addressed this issue in versions 7.14.7 and 8.8.1 of SuiteCRM. Users are urged to update their software to these versions or later. In situations where immediate patching is not possible, the use of a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is recommended as a temporary mitigation measure. However, these measures do not provide comprehensive protection and are not a substitute for patching the vulnerability.