Overview
CVE-2025-63513 describes an Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) vulnerability found in kishan0725 Hospital Management System v4. This vulnerability affects the appointment cancellation functionality, potentially allowing unauthorized users to cancel appointments belonging to other patients. An IDOR vulnerability occurs when an application uses user-supplied input to directly access objects, such as database records or files, without proper authorization checks. This allows an attacker to manipulate the input (e.g., an appointment ID) to access or modify objects they shouldn’t have access to.
Technical Details
The vulnerability resides within the appointment cancellation feature of the Hospital Management System. Specifically, the application likely relies on the appointment ID passed via a GET or POST request without verifying whether the user initiating the cancellation request is authorized to manage that specific appointment. An attacker could potentially intercept a legitimate cancellation request, modify the appointment ID to that of another patient, and successfully cancel their appointment. This exploitability depends on the implementation of the application and specifically if the system doesn’t adequately check if the requesting user has permissions to delete the appointment associated with the provided ID.
Example Scenario:
Suppose a legitimate cancellation request looks like this: /cancel_appointment?id=123. An attacker could change the ID to /cancel_appointment?id=456, potentially cancelling appointment 456 if proper authorization checks are missing.
CVSS Analysis
Currently, the CVE entry states the severity and CVSS score as “N/A”. While a CVSS score hasn’t been formally assigned, the impact of this vulnerability could be significant. A proper CVSS score would depend on the context of the application’s deployment and usage. The lack of a score does not diminish the potential risk. It’s essential to consider the potential impact based on the specific environment.
Possible Impact
Successful exploitation of this IDOR vulnerability could have several serious consequences:
- Unauthorized Appointment Cancellation: Patients could have their appointments cancelled without their consent or knowledge.
- Disruption of Healthcare Services: Mass cancellation of appointments could disrupt hospital operations and patient care.
- Data Manipulation: Depending on the application’s design, this vulnerability could potentially be chained with other vulnerabilities to gain access to sensitive patient data.
- Reputational Damage: The hospital’s reputation could be damaged due to compromised data and service disruptions.
Mitigation or Patch Steps
To mitigate this vulnerability, the following steps should be taken:
- Implement Proper Authorization Checks: The most critical step is to implement robust authorization checks on the server-side before allowing any appointment cancellation. The system must verify that the user initiating the request has the necessary permissions to cancel the specified appointment. This should involve checking the user’s role and comparing it against the appointment’s ownership.
- Use Indirect Object References: Instead of directly using the appointment ID in the request, consider using a more opaque, user-specific identifier. This makes it more difficult for attackers to guess or manipulate object references.
- Input Validation and Sanitization: While not a complete solution, validating and sanitizing user input can help prevent other types of attacks.
- Apply Security Updates: Keep the Hospital Management System updated with the latest security patches and updates provided by the vendor (kishan0725). Check the vendor’s website and the GitHub repository for updates related to issue #55.
- Regular Security Audits: Conduct regular security audits and penetration testing to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.
References
GitHub – Zero-Days IDOR Vulnerability Report
GitHub – kishan0725 Hospital-Management-System Issue #55
CVE Details will be available at cve.org
