CVE-2025-26748: Cross-Site Request Forgery Vulnerability in LOOS Arkhe

Overview

The CVE-2025-26748 vulnerability represents a significant security risk for users of LOOS, Inc.’s Arkhe, a popular PHP application used for a variety of web-based services. This flaw exposes these systems to a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attack that can lead to a PHP Local File Inclusion, potentially compromising the system or leading to data leakage.
The importance of this vulnerability lies in its severity and the wide usage of Arkhe in the web development world. Given Arkhe’s popularity, the impact of this vulnerability could be extensive and damaging to both users and organizations that rely on this product.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-26748
Severity: High (CVSS: 8.1)
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Impact: System compromise and potential data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

LOOS, Inc. Arkhe | n/a to 3.11.0

How the Exploit Works

The CVE-2025-26748 vulnerability works by exploiting the CSRF vulnerability in LOOS, Inc.’s Arkhe. An attacker can trick an authenticated user into sending a forged HTTP request, including the session cookie and any other automatically included authentication information, to a vulnerable web application. This can lead to a PHP Local File Inclusion, potentially compromising the system or leading to data leakage.

Conceptual Example Code

A potential exploit could look like this:

POST /vulnerable/endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: target.example.com
Content-Type: application/json
{
"include_file": "/etc/passwd"
}

This example shows a forged HTTP request that includes a malicious payload. This payload tricks the server into including a file from the local file system, in this case, the ‘/etc/passwd’ file, which can provide the attacker with access to sensitive data.

Mitigation Guidance

The primary solution to this vulnerability is to apply the patch provided by the vendor as soon as possible. If the patch cannot be applied immediately, using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can serve as a temporary mitigation measure. These systems can provide protection by detecting and blocking suspicious requests that match the pattern of this exploit. However, these are just temporary measures, and the patch should be applied as soon as it is feasible to do so.