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CVE-2025-5590: Time-Based SQL Injection Vulnerability in Owl Carousel Plugin for WordPress

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Overview

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures system has identified a severe vulnerability, tagged as CVE-2025-5590, within the Owl Carousel plugin for WordPress. This plugin, popular for its responsive carousel function, is susceptible to time-based SQL Injection attacks via the ‘id’ parameter, affecting all versions up to and including 1.9. It is crucial to address this vulnerability promptly as it can compromise systems and lead to data leakage, posing a serious risk to a vast number of websites employing WordPress and the Owl Carousel plugin.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-5590
Severity: High (8.8 CVSS Severity Score)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: Low (Contributor-level access)
User Interaction: Required
Impact: System compromise and potential data leakage

Affected Products

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Product | Affected Versions

Owl Carousel Plugin for WordPress | Up to and including 1.9

How the Exploit Works

The vulnerability arises from insufficient escaping on the user-supplied ‘id’ parameter and lack of adequate preparation on the existing SQL query within the Owl Carousel plugin. Consequently, authenticated attackers possessing Contributor-level access or above can exploit this vulnerability by appending additional SQL queries into existing ones. This manipulation can extract sensitive information from the database, compromising the system and potentially leading to data leakage.

Conceptual Example Code

Below is a conceptual HTTP POST request illustrating how an attacker might exploit this vulnerability:

POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=owl_carousel HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
id=1 UNION SELECT 1,@@version -- -

In this example, the attacker is injecting a SQL query (`UNION SELECT 1,@@version`) via the ‘id’ parameter. This query retrieves the version of the database software. The `– -` at the end is a comment marker that ensures any additional SQL code after the injection is ignored, preventing syntax errors.

Mitigation Measures

To mitigate this vulnerability, users are advised to apply the vendor patch as soon as it becomes available. In the interim, a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can be deployed as temporary mitigation. Regularly updating and patching software, employing strong access controls, and monitoring system logs can also help guard against such vulnerabilities.

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Disclaimer:

The information and code presented in this article are provided for educational and defensive cybersecurity purposes only. Any conceptual or pseudocode examples are simplified representations intended to raise awareness and promote secure development and system configuration practices.

Do not use this information to attempt unauthorized access or exploit vulnerabilities on systems that you do not own or have explicit permission to test.

Ameeba and its authors do not endorse or condone malicious behavior and are not responsible for misuse of the content. Always follow ethical hacking guidelines, responsible disclosure practices, and local laws.

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