CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2025-44040 — An issue in OrangeHRM v.5.7 allows an attacker to escalate privileges via UserService.php and the checkForOldHash function
An issue in OrangeHRM v.5.7 allows an attacker to escalate privileges via UserService.php and the checkForOldHash function. Authentication decisions may be made via PHP loose-equality comparisons if a specific MD5 value is present in the credential store. NOTE: this is disputed by the Supplier because an adversary has no way to place the specific MD5 value into the credential store (unless they already have full privileges) and because the specific MD5 value would not realistically be present otherwise.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.2 (3.1)
- Published
- 2025-05-21
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-269
Affected products
- orangehrm / orangehrm / 5.7
Matched remediation archetype
Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
- Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
- Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.
Remediate safely
- Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
- Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
- Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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