Attack Chain

1. Attacker authenticates to the Open ISES Tickets application with valid credentials.
2. Attacker crafts a malicious HTTP POST request targeting ajax/statistics.php.
3. The POST request includes the tick_id or f_tick_id parameter containing a SQL injection payload.
4. The application unsafely concatenates the attacker-controlled parameters into the SQL query’s WHERE clause.
5. The malicious SQL query executes against the database, potentially altering data selection, modification, or deletion.
6. The application returns a potentially modified or erroneous statistics rollup result based on the injected SQL.
7. Attacker analyzes the response to refine and escalate the SQL injection attack.
8. Attacker leverages the successful SQL injection to read sensitive database contents or perform unauthorized data manipulation, potentially compromising the entire application.

Impact

Successful exploitation of this SQL injection vulnerability (CVE-2026-48240) could allow an attacker to read sensitive information from the Open ISES Tickets database, potentially including user credentials, ticket details, and other confidential data. The attacker may also be able to modify or delete data, leading to data corruption or denial of service. Given the high CVSS score of 7.1, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to the confidentiality and integrity of the application and its data.

Recommendation

• Upgrade Open ISES Tickets to version 3.44.2 or later to patch CVE-2026-48240 (see References).
• Deploy the Sigma rules provided below to detect potential exploitation attempts targeting the vulnerable ajax/statistics.php endpoint.
• Implement input validation and sanitization for the tick_id and f_tick_id POST parameters in ajax/statistics.php to prevent SQL injection attacks.
• Review and restrict database access privileges for the Open ISES Tickets application to minimize the impact of successful SQL injection attacks.