CVE-2026-50636 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) SQL Injection vulnerability in limesurvey/limesurvey. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
LimeSurvey has a SQL Injection issue
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-50636.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-50636 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,842 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
limesurvey/limesurveyReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The RemoteControl API methods invite_participants and remind_participants pass a caller-supplied token-ID array into TokenDynamic::findUninvited(), which concatenates the values directly into a tid IN ('...') SQL clause without parameterization or input validation. A remote, authenticated attacker holding the tokens/update permission on a survey can inject a crafted array element to perform SQL injection. Because LimeSurvey configures its PDO connection with emulated prepared statements (emulatePrepare = true) and does not disable MySQL multi-statements, the injection supports stacked queries: the attacker can append arbitrary additional statements (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE/DROP/CREATE) after the original SELECT. This permits both arbitrary read of any data in the database, such as administrator bcrypt password hashes (lime_users), survey response PII, session records, and global settings, all recoverable via a SLEEP() time-based blind oracle, and arbitrary write/destruction of that data, including directly overwriting the administrator password hash for immediate account takeover or dropping/truncating tables. Reads and writes extend to any schema the application's database user can access. The RemoteControl interface (RPCInterface = json/xml) must be enabled, which is not the default.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | limesurvey/limesurvey | all versions | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for limesurvey/limesurvey, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
No patched version of limesurvey/limesurvey has shipped for CVE-2026-50636 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
Until you can upgrade, make sure every query built from user input uses parameterised statements or a prepared-statement API rather than string concatenation, and reduce the database account's privileges so an injected query cannot read or alter data beyond what the feature needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-50636 in your dependencies?
Find it across Packagist, including transitive dependencies.