VulnerabilityPublished 10 Jan 2025Updated 13 Jan 2025

CVE-2025-23111: Vanderbilt REDCap · XSS or 'Cross-site Scripting'

Affects Vanderbilt REDCapSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.7 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 17:16 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.7Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 21% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: Low
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 10 Jan 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubping-oui-no/REDCap`pkg:github/ping-oui-no/REDCap`Other threats	Affected =14.9.6	Fixed in–

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AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-23111, organizations should implement the following specific measures: 1) Immediately review and sanitize all user-supplied input fields, especially the Survey field names, using strict whitelist-based input validation and proper HTML entity encoding to prevent injection of malicious HTML or scripts. 2) Employ Content Security Policy (CSP) headers to restrict the execution of unauthorized scripts and limit redirection capabilities. 3) Educate survey recipients and users about the risk of clicking unexpected or suspicious links within surveys, emphasizing verification of URLs before interaction. 4) Monitor survey content for anomalous or suspicious field names that could indicate attempted exploitation. 5) If possible, temporarily disable or restrict the ability to create or modify survey field names until a vendor patch is available. 6) Coordinate with Vanderbilt for timely updates and patches, and plan for rapid deployment once available. 7) Implement web application firewalls (WAFs) with custom rules to detect and block malicious payloads targeting the Survey field name parameter. 8) Conduct regular security assessments and penetration testing focused on input validation and XSS vulnerabilities in REDCap deployments. These targeted actions go beyond generic advice by focusing on the specific injection vector and user interaction pattern of this vulnerability.

Description

An issue was discovered in REDCap 14.9.6. It allows HTML Injection via the Survey field name, exposing users to a redirection to a phishing website. An attacker can exploit this to trick the user that receives the survey into clicking on the field name, which redirects them to a phishing website. Thus, this allows malicious actions to be executed without user consent.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2025-23111 is on the integrity and trustworthiness of user interactions with REDCap surveys. Attackers can exploit the vulnerability to redirect users to phishing websites, potentially leading to credential theft, malware infection, or further social engineering attacks. While the vulnerability does not directly compromise the confidentiality or availability of REDCap data, the redirection can undermine user confidence and the integrity of survey results. Organizations relying on REDCap for clinical, academic, or research data collection may face reputational damage and increased risk of targeted phishing campaigns. Since REDCap is widely used in healthcare and research sectors globally, the vulnerability could facilitate targeted attacks against these communities, especially if combined with other attack vectors. The requirement for user interaction limits automated exploitation but does not eliminate risk, as phishing remains a common and effective attack method. The lack of a patch increases exposure time, emphasizing the need for proactive mitigation.

Summary

CVE-2025-23111 is a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability classified under CWE-79, discovered in Vanderbilt's REDCap version 14.9.6, a widely used web-based application for managing research surveys and databases. The vulnerability stems from improper input sanitization of the Survey field name, which allows an attacker to inject arbitrary HTML code. When a user views the survey containing the malicious field name, clicking on it triggers a redirection to a phishing website controlled by the attacker. This attack vector leverages social engineering to deceive users into visiting malicious sites, potentially leading to credential theft or further compromise. The vulnerability does not require any authentication and can be exploited remotely over the network, but it does require user interaction (clicking the malicious field). The CVSS v3.1 score is 4.7 (medium severity), reflecting the lack of direct confidentiality impact but acknowledging the integrity risk due to redirection and user deception. No patches or official fixes have been released yet, and no known exploits are currently reported in the wild. The issue affects only version 14.9.6 of REDCap, so users of other versions may not be vulnerable. The vulnerability highlights the importance of proper input validation and output encoding in web applications, especially those handling sensitive research data.

CWE-79Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #1OWASP Top 10 A05:2025: Injection (opens in a new tab)
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
Architecture and Design · Libraries or Frameworks
Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Understand the context in which your data will be used and the encoding that will be expected. This is especially important when transmitting data between different components, or when generating outputs that can contain multiple encodings at the same time, such as web pages or multi-part mail messages.
Architecture and Design · Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide…
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Cross Site Scripting Prevention (opens in a new tab)
DOM based XSS Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Injection Prevention (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V5.3.3 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XSS Using MIME Type Mismatch (opens in a new tab)
DOM-Based XSS (opens in a new tab)
Reflected XSS (opens in a new tab)
Stored XSS (opens in a new tab)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

github.com/ping-oui-no/Vulnerability-Research-CVESS/blob/main/RedCap/CVE_YYYY/README.md (opens in a new tab)

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 27 Feb 2026, 12:35 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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