VulnerabilityPublished 25 Jul 2025Updated 29 Jul 2025

CVE-2025-45406: codeigniter4 · A Stored Cross-site Scripting (XSS)

Affects codeigniter4Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.1 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 13:47 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.1Medium

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

EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 31% 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:L/I:L/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: Low
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: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to 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 25 Jul 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
GitHubcodeigniter4/codeigniter4`pkg:github/codeigniter4/codeigniter4`Other threats	Affected =4.6.0	Fixed in–

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

Immediate verification of whether the debugbar feature is enabled and accessible to untrusted users in the deployed CodeIgniter4 applications. If not required, disable the debugbar entirely to eliminate the attack surface.
Conduct a thorough code review and testing to confirm whether the debugbar_time parameter can be influenced by external inputs and whether the escaping mechanisms are effective in the specific deployment context.
Apply strict input validation and output encoding on all parameters related to debugbar and any user-controllable inputs, ensuring that any HTML or script content is properly sanitized.
Monitor web application logs and user reports for any suspicious activity or attempts to inject scripts via the debugbar_time parameter.
Stay updated with official CodeIgniter security advisories for any patches or updates addressing this vulnerability and apply them promptly once available.
Implement Content Security Policy (CSP) headers to restrict the execution of unauthorized scripts in the browser, mitigating the impact of potential XSS attacks.
Educate users about phishing and social engineering risks, as exploitation requires user interaction.
Consider deploying Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) with rules targeting common XSS payloads to provide an additional layer of defense.

Description

A stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in CodeIgniter4 v4.6.0 allows attackers to execute arbitrary web scripts or HTML via a crafted payload injected into the debugbar_time parameter. NOTE: this is disputed by the Supplier because attackers cannot influence the value of debugbar_time, and because debugbar-related data is automatically escaped by the CodeIgniter Parser class.

Impact

For European organizations using CodeIgniter4 version 4.6.0, this vulnerability could pose a moderate risk, particularly for web applications that enable debugbar features accessible or influenced by untrusted users. Exploitation could lead to unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information (confidentiality impact) and modification of displayed content (integrity impact), potentially undermining user trust and compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR. Although availability is not impacted, the reputational damage and potential data leakage could have significant consequences. The requirement for user interaction (UI:R) means that attackers would need to trick users into triggering the malicious payload, which may limit large-scale automated exploitation. The supplier's dispute and automatic escaping mechanisms may reduce the likelihood of successful exploitation, but organizations should not rely solely on this and should verify their specific implementation and usage of the debugbar component. European organizations in sectors with high web presence, such as finance, e-commerce, and public services, should be particularly vigilant, as attackers often target these sectors for data theft and fraud.

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

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 2 Aug 2025, 00:56 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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