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Ash Qin

Alpha-Fox Security Disclosure Report 2025.04.15

Posted by Ash Qin on 15 April 2025, 9:21:02 am

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
  • What Was the Issue?
  • What Could Have Happened?
  • How Was It Addressed?
  • Was Any Data Compromised?
• Detailed Report
  • Affected Systems and Components
  • Summary of Findings
  • SQL Injection Related CVSS 3.1 Severity Details
  • Detailed Timeline
  • Impact
  • Remediation Actions
  • Summary

Executive Summary

What Was the Issue?

A critical SQL injection vulnerability was discovered in a legacy script verifying ASN API 1.0 and 1.1 API keys. This script failed to properly sanitise input in the apikey field, potentially allowing an attacker to inject malicious SQL commands into the database.

What Could Have Happened?

If exploited, this flaw could have enabled attackers to:

• Access or Manipulate Sensitive Data: Potentially view, modify, or delete important records.
• Disrupt Services: Corrupting or dropping critical tables could have led to outages or service instability.

How Was It Addressed?

Upon identifying the vulnerability, Alpha-Fox immediately:

• Updated the script to use secure, parameterised queries and stricter validation of the apikey field.
• Performed an API-wide audit to confirm that no additional injection points existed.

Was Any Data Compromised?

A thorough review of server logs and database records revealed no suspicious activity, indicating that this vulnerability was not exploited. No user data appears to have been compromised.

Detailed Report

Affected Systems and Components

1. API Key Verification Script (ASN API 1.0 & 1.1)

   • A single legacy script accepted unsanitised user input for the apikey field, allowing potential SQL injection.

2. Database Layer

   • Because of the injection risk, an attacker could have run arbitrary queries, leading to data exposure or corruption.

Summary of Findings

1. SQL Injection Vulnerability

   • A missing sanitisation step allowed hostile SQL code to be injected via the apikey parameter.
   • The script was separate from the main application, so previous security audits had overlooked it.

2. No Evidence of Exploitation

   • Detailed log analysis showed no unauthorised queries or data manipulation before the patch.
   • The risk level was high, but the actual impact remained nil.

SQL Injection Related CVSS 3.1 Severity Details

• CVSS Vector: AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

  • Attack Vector (AV): Network
  • Attack Complexity (AC): High
  • Privileges Required (PR): None
  • User Interaction (UI): None
  • Scope (S): Unchanged
  • Confidentiality (C): High
  • Integrity (I): High
  • Availability (A): High
  • Exploit Code Maturity (E): Unproven
  • Remediation Level (RL): Official fix
  • Report Confidence (RC): Confirmed

• CVSS Base Score: 8.1

• Impact Subscore: 5.9

• Exploitability Subscore: 2.2

• CVSS Temporal Score: 7.3

• Overall CVSS Score: 7.3

This reflects a high severity issue, requiring urgent remediation.

Detailed Timeline

• 2025.04.08

  • Discovery: Kyomuno Tsuki reports a potential SQL injection vulnerability via offline messages to Ash Qin's account.

• 2025.04.15

  • Alert Reviewed: Ash Qin sees the messages upon logging in.
  • Validation: Confirms the API key script accepts unsanitised queries.
  • System Audit: Logs are inspected; no suspicious activity or data compromise is found.
  • Patch Deployed: The vulnerable script is updated to use parameterised queries, closing the injection risk.

Impact

• Data Integrity
  Attackers could have altered or deleted essential records, harming user trust.

• Data Confidentiality
  There was the potential for leaked private information if malicious SQL queries had run successfully.

• Service Availability
  Malicious queries could have locked tables, corrupted data or otherwise disrupted normal operations.

Remediation Actions

1. Immediate Code Fix

   • Replaced the legacy input handling with robust parameterised queries.

2. Comprehensive Audit

   • Investigated all API endpoints to confirm no other scripts had similar weaknesses.

3. Enhanced Logging & Monitoring

   • Implemented real-time alerts on unusual query patterns to rapidly identify any future anomalies.

Summary

Alpha-Fox identified a high-severity SQL injection vulnerability in its API key verification process but contained the issue before any damage occurred. No further exploit paths or compromised data were found after immediate patching, code refactoring, and a security audit.