CVE-2024-54128 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.7) CWE-80 vulnerability in @directus/app. A fix is available for @directus/app — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Directus has an HTML Injection in Comment
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-2024-54128.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-54128 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
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.
@directus/appnpmdirectusnpmDescription
Summary
The Comment feature has implemented a filter to prevent users from adding restricted characters, such as HTML tags. However, this filter operates on the client-side, which can be bypassed, making the application vulnerable to HTML Injection.
Details
The Comment feature implements a character filter on the client-side, this can be bypassed by directly sending a request to the endpoint.
Example Request:
PATCH /activity/comment/3 HTTP/2
Host: directus.local
{
"comment": "<h1>TEST <p style=\"color:red\">HTML INJECTION</p> <a href=\"//evil.com\">Test Link</a></h1>"
}
Example Response:
{
"data": {
"id": 3,
"action": "comment",
"user": "288fdccc-399a-40a1-ac63-811bf62e6a18",
"timestamp": "2023-09-06T02:23:40.740Z",
"ip": "10.42.0.1",
"user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/116.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
"collection": "directus_files",
"item": "7247dda1-c386-4e7a-8121-7e9c1a42c15a",
"comment": "<h1>TEST <p style=\"color:red\">HTML INJECTION</p> <a href=\"//evil.com\">Test Link</a></h1>",
"origin": "https://directus.local",
"revisions": []
}
}
Example Result:
Impact
With the introduction of session cookies this issue has become exploitable as a malicious script is now able to do authenticated actions on the current users behalf.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | @directus/app | ≥ 11.0.0&&< 13.3.1 | 13.3.1npm install @directus/app@13.3.1 |
| 📦npm | directus | ≥ 10.10.0&&< 10.13.4 | 10.13.4npm install directus@10.13.4 |
| 📦npm | directus | ≥ 11.0.0-rc.1&&< 11.2.2 | 11.2.2npm install directus@11.2.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for @directus/app, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update @directus/app to 13.3.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-54128 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-54128 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-54128. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-54128 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-54128 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.