Overview
CVE-2026-37749 is a critical SQL injection vulnerability in CodeAstro Simple Attendance Management System v1.0, carrying a CVSS score of 9.8 (Critical). An unauthenticated remote attacker can inject malicious SQL via the username parameter on index.php to completely bypass the authentication mechanism and gain administrative access to the application.
Technical Details
The vulnerability is a classic authentication bypass via SQL injection. The login form at index.php passes the username value directly into a SQL query without sanitization or parameterized queries. By submitting a crafted payload such as:
' OR '1'='1
or a comment-based variant:
admin'--
an attacker causes the backend SQL query to always evaluate as true, granting full access regardless of the actual password supplied. Because no authentication is required to reach the vulnerable parameter, the attack is exploitable by any unauthenticated remote user with HTTP access to the application.
Affected Products
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| Product | CodeAstro Simple Attendance Management System |
| Version | v1.0 |
| Vulnerable Parameter | username in index.php |
| Vulnerability Type | SQL Injection / Authentication Bypass |
| CVSS Score | 9.8 (Critical) |
| Attack Vector | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low |
| Privileges Required | None |
| User Interaction | None |
Proof of Concept
The following payload submitted to the login endpoint bypasses authentication:
POST /index.php HTTP/1.1
Host: target
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
username=' OR '1'='1&password=anythingNo valid credentials are required. The server authenticates the attacker as the first user returned by the manipulated query — typically the administrator account.
Impact
Successful exploitation gives an attacker:
- Full administrative access to the attendance management application
- Read/write access to the database — student and employee attendance records, personal data, and system configurations
- Potential for further exploitation — depending on server configuration, SQL injection may be escalated to OS command execution via techniques such as
INTO OUTFILEor stacked queries - Data exfiltration of all stored records
Remediation
Developers and administrators should take the following actions immediately:
- Use prepared statements (parameterized queries) for all database interactions — this is the only reliable fix
- Input validation — reject or sanitize input containing SQL metacharacters
- Principle of least privilege — the database user for the web application should have the minimum permissions needed
- Web Application Firewall (WAF) — deploy a WAF with SQL injection rules as a compensating control
- Upgrade or replace — evaluate whether CodeAstro Simple Attendance Management System receives security patches; consider alternatives with an active security track record