VulnerabilityPublished 8 Jan 2026

CVE-2025-63611: phpgurukul Hostel Management System · Cross-site Scripting

Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 8.7 High.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 10:12 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

8.7High

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

EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 23% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

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

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: High
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: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
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: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: High: There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the impacted component. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to 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 8 Jan 2026
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

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-63611, organizations should implement multiple layers of defense beyond generic advice: 1) Apply vendor patches or updates as soon as they become available to fix the input sanitization and output encoding flaws. 2) In the absence of patches, implement web application firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block suspicious script payloads in complaint submissions. 3) Enforce strict input validation on the 'Explain the Complaint' field, allowing only safe characters and stripping or encoding HTML tags. 4) Employ output encoding techniques such as HTML entity encoding when rendering user input in the admin interface to prevent script execution. 5) Limit administrative access to trusted networks and use multi-factor authentication to reduce risk of session hijacking. 6) Monitor logs for unusual complaint submissions or admin page accesses indicative of exploitation attempts. 7) Educate administrators to be cautious when opening complaint details from untrusted users. 8) Consider implementing Content Security Policy (CSP) headers to restrict execution of inline scripts in the admin interface. These targeted mitigations will reduce the attack surface and protect sensitive administrative functions.

Description

CVE-2025-63611 is a high-severity stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in phpgurukul Hostel Management System v2.1. The issue arises from improper sanitization of user input in the complaint submission form, specifically the 'Explain the Complaint' field. Malicious HTML or JavaScript code submitted by a user is stored and later executed in the administrator's browser when viewing complaint details. Exploitation requires an authenticated user to submit a crafted complaint and an administrator to open the complaint details page, resulting in potential compromise of admin session confidentiality and integrity. This vulnerability does not impact system availability but can lead to privilege escalation or unauthorized actions via the admin interface. No public exploits are currently known, but the vulnerability has a CVSS score of 8.7, indicating high risk. European organizations using this system should prioritize patching or mitigating this flaw to protect administrative accounts and sensitive data.

Impact

For European organizations using phpgurukul Hostel Management System v2.1, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to administrative account security and the integrity of complaint management data. Successful exploitation can lead to theft of administrator session cookies, enabling attackers to impersonate admins and perform unauthorized actions such as modifying complaint records, accessing sensitive user data, or escalating privileges within the system. This can result in data breaches, loss of trust, and potential regulatory non-compliance under GDPR due to exposure of personal data. Although availability is not directly impacted, the compromise of administrative functions can disrupt operational workflows and incident response capabilities. Given the administrative interface is targeted, organizations with centralized hostel or accommodation management relying on this system are particularly vulnerable. The requirement for an authenticated user to submit malicious input limits exposure but insider threats or compromised user accounts increase risk. The lack of known exploits in the wild suggests a window for proactive mitigation before widespread attacks occur.

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

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 15 Jan 2026, 17:17 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-79

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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