Overview
A serious vulnerability has been identified in Kanboard, the project management software that is popular amongst many organizations who follow the Kanban methodology. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-55010, allows admin users to instantiate arbitrary PHP objects, leading to potential system compromise or data leakage. This vulnerability is especially critical because of the high severity score assigned to it, as well as the potential damage it can cause if exploited.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-55010
Severity: Critical (CVSS: 9.1)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: High (Admin rights)
User Interaction: Required
Impact: System Compromise, Data leakage
Affected Products
Escape the Surveillance Era
Most apps won’t tell you the truth.
They’re part of the problem.
Phone numbers. Emails. Profiles. Logs.
It’s all fuel for surveillance.
Ameeba Chat gives you a way out.
- • No phone number
- • No email
- • No personal info
- • Anonymous aliases
- • End-to-end encrypted
Chat without a trace.
Product | Affected Versions
Kanboard | Prior to 1.2.47
How the Exploit Works
In the versions prior to 1.2.47, Kanboard had an unsafe deserialization vulnerability in the ProjectEventActvityFormatter. Admin users had the ability to instantiate arbitrary PHP objects by modifying the event[“data”] field in the project_activities table. A malicious actor could update this field to use a PHP gadget to write a web shell into the /plugins folder, which consequently gives remote code execution on the host system.
Conceptual Example Code
A rough example of exploiting this vulnerability might look like this:
UPDATE project_activities SET event['data'] = 'O:8:"stdClass":1:{s:4:"code";s:48:"system($_GET['cmd']);";}' WHERE id = [target_id]This query modifies the event[“data”] field to include a PHP gadget, which is a piece of code that can be used to inject a web shell into the /plugins folder. Once the web shell is there, it can be used to execute arbitrary code on the host system.
Mitigation
The vulnerability has been patched in version 1.2.47 of Kanboard. Therefore, users are strongly advised to update to this version as soon as possible. If for any reason an immediate update is not possible, a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can be used as a temporary mitigation measure.