CVE-2023-27481 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.3) Information Exposure vulnerability in directus. A fix is available for directus — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Extract password hashes through export querying in directus
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-2023-27481.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
directusnpmDescription
Directus is a real-time API and App dashboard for managing SQL database content. In versions prior to 9.16.0 users with read access to the password field in directus_users can extract the argon2 password hashes by brute forcing the export functionality combined with a _starts_with filter. This allows the user to enumerate the password hashes. Accounts cannot be taken over unless the hashes can be reversed which is unlikely with current hardware. This problem has been patched by preventing any hashed/concealed field to be filtered against with the _starts_with or other string operator in version 9.16.0. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade may mitigate this issue by ensuring that no user has read access to the password field in directus_users.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | directus | all versions | 9.16.0npm install directus@9.16.0 |
Affected Products
directusmonospaceDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for directus, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update directus to 9.16.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-27481 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-27481 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.