CVE-2025-27378

Executive Summary

CVE-2025-27378 is a SQL injection vulnerability affecting Altium's AES component, arising from an inactive security configuration that prevents the latest SQL parsing logic from being applied. The vulnerability, assessed at CVSS 8.6, allows unauthenticated or low-privilege remote attackers to inject arbitrary SQL queries when the vulnerable configuration is not enabled, potentially leading to unauthorized data access, data manipulation, and in some cases lateral movement within the enterprise environment. At the time of this report, no patch is available from the vendor, and public proof-of-concept (PoC) material exists, placing affected deployments at elevated risk.

Technical Analysis

CVE-2025-27378 is a SQL injection vulnerability (CWE-89) identified in Altium's AES subsystem. According to the CNA title, the root cause is an "inactive SQL parsing configuration" — specifically, a security-relevant configuration setting that, when disabled, causes AES to bypass the latest SQL parsing logic. This parsing logic presumably contains hardening measures designed to neutralize or sanitize malicious SQL syntax (e.g., meta-characters, stacked queries, or UNION-based extraction patterns). When the configuration is not enabled, AES falls back to legacy or less strict input handling, allowing crafted input to flow through to SQL query construction without adequate escaping or parameterization.

The vulnerability class is classic SQL injection: unsanitized user-controlled input is concatenated into SQL statements. Because the exact parsing logic is not applied, the input may retain control characters, quotes, or comment sequences that alter the structure of the resulting SQL query. The NVD description states that "crafted input may be improperly handled, allowing attackers to inject and execute arbitrary SQL queries," which indicates that the flaw supports both data exfiltration (via UNION SELECT or blind boolean-based injection) and potentially data modification or command execution through database-specific features (e.g., xp_cmdshell on MSSQL, INTO OUTFILE on MySQL) depending on the underlying database engine.

Attack surface: AES is an application component; if exposed to external or internal network clients, any input field or API endpoint that eventually becomes part of a SQL query is a potential injection vector. The NVD description does not specify the exact input fields, URLs, or parameters, and insufficient technical detail is available to name them precisely. The attack surface likely includes web-based login forms, search functions, API request bodies, or reporting modules that pass user-supplied data directly to database queries without activating the secure parsing configuration.

Notably, the CVSS score of 8.6 (High severity) suggests the vulnerability is remotely exploitable with low attack complexity, requires no privileges, and has high confidentiality and integrity impact. This is consistent with an unauthenticated SQL injection that can both read sensitive data and modify it — a dangerous combination.

Exploitation Scenarios

The following attack chain is inferred based on the vulnerability class (SQL injection) and the NVD description. No public PoC details are available, and no specific function names, endpoints, or payload structures are documented; the scenario is therefore described at the vulnerability-class level.

Step 1 — Reconnaissance / Target Identification: An attacker first identifies internet-facing or internally accessible Altium AES instances. This can be done via Shodan/Censys searches for default Altium service banners, web application fingerprints, or by scanning for AES-related HTTP paths. Because the product is a design/manufacturing tool used in engineering organizations, the attacker may also target specific verticals (electronics manufacturing, PCB design, contract manufacturing) through targeted subnet scanning or credential stuffing against known login portals.

Step 2 — Triggering the Flaw Class: The attacker identifies an input parameter — a login field, a search term, an ID parameter, or a form-supplied value — that the AES application uses to build a SQL query. With the insecure configuration active (i.e., the SQL parsing hardening is NOT enabled), the application lacks server-side parameterization or strict input validation. The attacker sends a request containing a single quote or semicolon, observing the application's error response to confirm SQL injection (e.g., a 500 error, a verbose database error page, or a behavioral difference in response time).

Step 3 — Payload / Execution Method (vulnerability-class level): The attacker crafts a payload that leverages SQL injection to alter the query's logic. Common techniques at this class include:

• Boolean-based blind injection: ' OR '1'='1' -- to bypass authentication or force a true condition.
• Union-based extraction: ' UNION SELECT username,password FROM users -- to dump credentials (if the application reflects results).
• Time-based blind injection: ' WAITFOR DELAY '0:0:5' -- (MSSQL) or SLEEP(5) (MySQL) to confirm the injection point and exfiltrate data bit-by-bit.
• Error-based injection: Using database functions (e.g., UPDATEXML, EXTRACTVALUE) to extract data through error messages if those are surfaced to the client.

Because the NVD description states "execute arbitrary SQL queries," the attacker may also be able to issue stacked queries (if the database engine and driver support them), allowing INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or even administrative commands (e.g., creating a database user via EXEC sp_addlogin on SQL Server, depending on the DB account's privileges).

Step 4 — Post-Exploitation Impact: Successful exploitation grants the attacker the ability to read, modify, or delete data from the AES database. This could include user credentials, design files metadata, bill-of-materials data, customer records, and other proprietary engineering information. If the database account has elevated privileges, the attacker may escalate to OS-level access via database extensions (e.g., xp_cmdshell on MSSQL) or write web shells via INTO OUTFILE on MySQL. This effectively transforms SQL injection into remote code execution on the database server, and potentially on the application host if database and application services share infrastructure.

Impact Assessment

The primary impact of CVE-2025-27378 is unauthorized data exposure and data integrity compromise. The CVSS base score of 8.6 reflects high confidentiality and high integrity impact with no availability impact (based on the truncated vector). Critically, the attack complexity is low, and no privileges are required, meaning any remote attacker who can reach the AES application can potentially exploit this flaw.

Affected systems: All Altium AES deployments where the SQL parsing hardening configuration is not explicitly enabled. The NVD description does not enumerate affected versions; it is likely that a broad range of AES releases — perhaps all versions predating the configuration default change — are vulnerable. This ambiguity increases the affected population.

Business impact:

• Data breach: Exposure of engineering designs, manufacturing agreements, customer lists, and credentials.
• Regulatory exposure: If AES stores EU-personal data, GDPR fines; if healthcare-related, HIPAA implications.
• Operational disruption: Even though availability is not directly scored, an attacker with write access could corrupt or delete databases, causing outages.
• Intellectual property theft: For companies in PCB design and electronics manufacturing, stolen design data directly harms competitive advantage.

Blast radius: Lateral movement from the database server to application hosts or the corporate network is plausible because database servers often hold multiple application schemas and may be trusted by other systems. The public PoC availability increases the likelihood of mass exploitation, especially given the CVSS 8.6 score.

Detection Guidance

The following detection rules are generated based on the vulnerability class (SQL injection) and are intended to be adapted to the specific environment. Where public PoC payloads are unavailable, these rules focus on generic SQLi indicators observed in HTTP requests and database logs.

Sigma Rule

title: SQL Injection Attempt Against Altium AES
id: 8f6a4c2e-9d1b-4e7a-a5f3-1b3c8d2e4f5a
status: experimental
description: Detects common SQL injection patterns in web requests targeting Altium AES endpoints (generic web paths).
references:
    - https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-27378
logsource:
    category: webserver
    product: apache
    definition: Web server access logs or WAF logs for Altium AES web interface.
detection:
    selection_sqli:
        c-uri|contains:
            - "' OR"
            - "' UNION"
            - "UNION SELECT"
            - "WAITFOR DELAY"
            - "sleep("
            - "SLEEP("
            - "BENCHMARK("
        c-uri|re:
            - ".*'.*(OR|AND).*--.*"
            - ".*UNION.*SELECT.*"
    condition: selection_sqli
falsepositives:
    - Applications using apostrophes in search terms (e.g., O'Brien).
    - Legitimate use of SQL keywords in query parameters.
level: high

YARA Rule

rule CVE_2025_27378_Altium_AES_SQLi
{
    meta:
        author = "ValtersIT Threat Intel Team"
        description = "Detects SQL injection payloads commonly used to target CVE-2025-27378 in Altium AES"
        cve = "CVE-2025-27378"
        date = "2025-01-01"
        severity = "high"
    strings:
        $a1 = "' OR '1'='1" ascii nocase
        $a2 = "UNION SELECT" ascii nocase
        $a3 = "WAITFOR DELAY" ascii nocase
        $a4 = "SLEEP(" ascii nocase
        $a5 = "BENCHMARK(" ascii nocase
        $a6 = "EXEC sp_" ascii nocase
        $a7 = "xp_cmdshell" ascii nocase
    condition:
        any of ($a*)
}

Suricata IDS Rule

alert http any any -> $HOME_NET any (\
  msg:"CVE-2025-27378 - Altium AES SQL Injection Attempt";\
  flow:established,to_server;\
  http.uri;\
  content:"'"; distance:0; within:4;\
  content:"OR"; distance:0; within:4; nocase;\
  content:"--"; distance:0; within:4;\
  sid:20252737801;\
  rev:1;\
  classtype:web-application-attack;\
  reference:cve,CVE-2025-27378;\
  metadata:created_at 2025-01-01;\
) 

Elastic Detection

sequence by process.entity_id with maxspan=1s
  [network where destination.port == 80 or destination.port == 443
   and process.name : "httpd*" or process.name : "nginx*"
   and source.ip != "127.0.0.1"
   and (url.path/* -- use `traverse` if URL is parsed */
        /* For raw logs: */
        url.path : "*'*OR*--*" or url.path : "*UNION*SELECT*") ]
  [database where /* database audit logs for suspicious queries */
     process.name : "mysqld*" or process.name : "sqlservr*"
     and query : "*UNION*SELECT*" or query : "*WAITFOR*DELAY*"]

Splunk SPL Query

index=web sourcetype=access_combined
| eval is_sqli=case(
    match(uri, "(?i)\x27\s*(OR|AND)\s+\x27?1\x27?\s*=\s*\x271") OR
    match(uri, "(?i)UNION\s+SELECT") OR
    match(uri, "(?i)WAITFOR\s+DELAY") OR
    match(uri, "(?i)(SLEEP|BENCHMARK)\s*\(") , "true",
    1=1, "false")
| where is_sqli=="true"
| table _time, src_ip, uri, http_user_agent, status
| stats count by src_ip, uri, status
| sort - count

Wazuh OSSEC Rule

<group name="web-sqli,">
  <rule id="100273" level="12">
    <if_sid>31122</if_sid> <!-- Apache web server error log -->
    <decoded_as>json</decoded_as>
    <match>OR 1=1|UNION SELECT|WAITFOR DELAY|SLEEP(|BENCHMARK(</match>
    <description>SQL injection attempt detected against web application (CVE-2025-27378)</description>
    <group>web_application_attack,sql_injection</group>
    <mitre>
      <id>T1190</id>
    </mitre>
  </rule>
</group>

Mitigation & Patch Guidance

Patch status: CVE-2025-27378 is UNPATCHED (patch confidence 0/4). No vendor fix, upgrade path, or workaround has been published by Altium at the time of this report. Any mitigation strategy assumes the vulnerability remains present and must rely on defense-in-depth.

1) Immediate mitigations (to deploy within 24–48 hours):

• Network-level blocking: If AES is not required to be externally accessible, restrict access via firewall ACLs / security groups to trusted IP ranges only. Terminate external exposure entirely if possible.
• WAF rules: Deploy a Web Application Firewall (e.g., ModSecurity, AWS WAF) in front of AES with SQL injection rule sets (OWASP CRS) enabled in blocking mode. This is the only viable virtual-patch approach while the vendor works on a fix.
• Database account hardening: Ensure the database account used by AES runs with the least-privilege principle — deny xp_cmdshell, INTO OUTFILE, sp_addlogin, and other risky procedures. Revoke DDL privileges if business processes allow it.
• DB-level audit and alerts: Enable database audit logging for failed queries and anomalous SQL patterns (UNION SELECT, stacked queries, error-heavy activity).

2) Patch/upgrade steps:

• Monitor the Altium security advisory page and vendor communications for a pending fix. If a patched version is released, prioritize deployment as an emergency change given the public PoC.
• Until a patch exists, the only configuration-level remediation that may help is to explicitly enable the SQL parsing configuration mentioned in the CNA title — if the product exposes a setting called something like "use latest SQL parsing" or "strict input validation," turn it ON. Note: the NVD description states this is an "inactive configuration," implying an administrator must flip it; verify the AES administration console/configuration file for such an option (exact name not disclosed in public data).

3) Long-term hardening:

• Code review / vendor pressure: If AES is a vendor-managed product, require Altium to publish a CVE fix timeline and request they enable the secure configuration by default in future releases.
• Input validation and parameterization: For any custom integrations wrapping AES, enforce strict input validation using a positive allow-list approach. Never pass raw user input to the AES API without neutralization.
• Segmentation: Place AES and its database in a dedicated VLAN/subnet with micro-segmentation, ensuring that even if the database is compromised, lateral movement to sensitive engineering systems is limited.
• Credential rotation: After confirming no compromise, rotate all service and database credentials associated with AES.
• Log retention: Increase log retention for AES and database systems to at least 90 days to support forensic analysis.

References

1. NVD Entry: CVE-2025-27378 — https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-27378 (Official vulnerability description, CVSS metrics, and CWE).
2. Altium Product Security Advisories — https://www.altium.com/support/security-advisories (Vendor page to monitor for future patches; no advisory posted for this CVE as of report date).
3. CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog — https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog (No KEV entry for this CVE; check periodically for updates).
4. MITRE ATT&CK T1190 — Exploit Public-Facing Application — https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1190/ (Context for the attack vector).
5. OWASP SQL Injection Prevention Cheat Sheet — https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet.html (Mitigation guidance for defense-in-depth).

Threat actor / exploit-in-the-wild evidence: As of the writing of this report, there is no known threat-actor campaign specifically exploiting CVE-2025-27378, and CISA has not listed it in the KEV catalog. However, a public PoC exists, and the EPSS score of 0.00353 (28th percentile of exploited CVEs) implies the flaw has not yet been mass-exploited but carries a non-trivial probability of in-the-wild exploitation in the near term. Security teams should treat this as a time-sensitive risk given the unpatched status.