CVE-2026-26980 is a SQL Injection vulnerability affecting Ghost, a popular Node.js content management system. The vulnerability exists in the Content API's slug filter ordering functionality, allowing unauthenticated attackers to perform arbitrary reads from the database. This flaw impacts versions 3.24.0 through 6.19.0 and has been addressed in version 6.19.1 .
Unauthenticated attackers can exploit this SQL injection vulnerability to extract sensitive data from the Ghost database, potentially compromising user credentials, authentication tokens, and site content without requiring any authentication.
This SQL Injection vulnerability (CWE-89) resides in Ghost's Content API slug filter ordering mechanism. The vulnerable code directly concatenates user-supplied slug values into SQL CASE statements without proper sanitization or parameterization. This allows attackers to inject arbitrary SQL syntax through the ordering parameter, enabling unauthorized database reads.
The vulnerability is particularly dangerous because it requires no authentication—any external attacker with network access to a Ghost instance can exploit this flaw to extract sensitive information from the underlying database.
The root cause is improper input validation in the slug-filter-order.js utility. The original implementation directly embedded user-supplied slug values into raw SQL strings using string interpolation:
This pattern allows attackers to break out of the string context and inject malicious SQL commands. The lack of parameterized queries or prepared statements creates a classic SQL injection attack surface.
The attack exploits the Content API's ordering functionality through network requests. An attacker can craft malicious slug values containing SQL syntax that, when processed by the vulnerable code, execute unintended database operations. Since the vulnerability is accessible without authentication and exploitable over the network, attackers can remotely extract database contents including potentially sensitive user information, API keys, and site configuration data.
The patch replaces string concatenation with parameterized bindings, ensuring user input is properly escaped and treated as data rather than SQL code.
Ghost has released version 6.19.1 which addresses this vulnerability by implementing parameterized queries for the slug filter ordering functionality. The fix ensures user-supplied values are properly bound as parameters rather than concatenated into SQL strings. For detailed technical information, review the GitHub Security Advisory GHSA-w52v-v783-gw97 and the GitHub Commit Update .
Disclaimer : This content was generated using AI. While we strive for accuracy, please verify critical information with official sources.
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