CVE-2024-36128 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-754 vulnerability in directus. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for directus — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Directus is soft-locked by providing a string value to random string util
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-36128.
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
Describe the Bug
Providing a non-numeric length value to the random string generation utility will create a memory issue breaking the capability to generate random strings platform wide. This creates a denial of service situation where logged in sessions can no longer be refreshed as sessions depend on the capability to generate a random session ID.
To Reproduce
- Test if the endpoint is working and accessible,
GET http://localhost:8055/utils/random/string - Do a bad request
GET http://localhost:8055/utils/random/string?length=foo - After this all calls to
GET http://localhost:8055/utils/random/stringwill return an empty string instead of a random string - In this error situation you'll see authentication refreshes fail for the app and api.
Impact
This counts as an unauthenticated denial of service attack vector so this impacts all unpatched instances reachable over the internet.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | directus | all versions | 10.11.2npm install directus@10.11.2 |
Affected Products
directusmonospaceResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & 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 10.11.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-36128 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-36128 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.