Drupal has patched an SQL injection flaw that could potentially let hackers load malicious code onto sites running version 7 of the platform.
The Drupal Association wrote in its advisory: "A vulnerability in this API allows an attacker to send specially crafted requests resulting in arbitrary SQL execution. Depending on the content of the requests, this can lead to privilege escalation, arbitrary PHP execution, or other attacks.
"Although there are no known exploits in use at this time, Drupal 7 sites are exposed to this vulnerability until they are updated."
It went on to say that unlike other vulnerabilities that could be fixed by plugging holes, this can only be patched by installing the latest version of Drupal - version 7.32 - to guard against possible attacks.
The flaw was discovered in an API that was developed to prevent such attacks happening against the open source content management system, but, as the Drupal Association admits, something went wrong and instead of sanitising the database requests against malicious code, it allowed requests to be made.
The vulnerability has been present since November 2013, but it wasn't until an independent security researcher discovered the problem and alerted Drupal that it was patched.
The company said it was advised of the vulnerability in the third week of September of 2014, but decided to wait until it had a security update scheduled before rolling out the patch.
Since Drupal issued the original alert, it updated the post, saying "There are now proof of concept (POC) instructions in the wild that demonstrate how to exploit this. While we do not have reports of actual usage, the nature of this vulnerability is such that the attack can be difficult to detect."
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