CVE-2024-39896 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Information Exposure 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 allows SSO User Enumeration
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-2024-39896.
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
Impact
When relying on SSO providers in combination with local authentication it can be possible to enumerate existing SSO users in the instance. This is possible because if an email address exists in Directus and belongs to a known SSO provider then it will throw a "helpful" error that the user belongs to another provider.
Reproduction
- Create a user using a SSO provider
[email protected]. - Try to log-in using the regular login form (or the API)
- When using a valid email address
| APP | API |
|---|---|
- When using an invalid email address
| APP | API |
|---|---|
- Using this differing error it is possible to determine whether a specific email address is present in the Directus instance as an SSO user.
Workarounds
When only using SSO for authentication then you can work around this issue by disabling local login using the following environment variable AUTH_DISABLE_DEFAULT="true"
References
Implemented as feature in https://github.com/directus/directus/pull/13184 https://owasp.org/www-project-web-security-testing-guide/v42/4-Web_Application_Security_Testing/03-Identity_Management_Testing/04-Testing_for_Account_Enumeration_and_Guessable_User_Account
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | directus | ≥ 9.11&&< 10.13.0 | 10.13.0npm install directus@10.13.0 |
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 10.13.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-39896 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-2024-39896 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.