CVE-2025-64173 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-288 vulnerability in apollo-router. A fix is available for apollo-router — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Apollo Router Core: Access Control Bypass on Polymorphic Types
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-2025-64173.
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-2025-64173 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 377,636 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
apollo-router🦀apollo-routerReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
A vulnerability in Apollo Router allowed for unauthenticated queries to access data that required additional access controls. Router incorrectly handled access control directives on interface types/fields and their implementing object types/fields, applying them to interface types/fields while ignoring directives on their implementing object types/fields when all implementations had the same requirements.
Details
Apollo Federation allows users to specify access control directives (@authenticated, @requiresScopes, and @policy) to protect object and interface types and fields. However, the GraphQL specification does not define inheritance rules for directives from interfaces to their implementations. Apollo Router will enforce any directives on the interface types/fields but ignore any directives on the implementation object types/fields (as long as all implementations have the same requirements). This inconsistent enforcement behavior leads to unexpected runtime security gaps.
Who is impacted
This vulnerability impacts Apollo Router customers defining @authenticated, @requiresScopes, or @policy directives inconsistently on polymorphic types (i.e., object types that implement interface types). Specifically, if the same access control directives are applied to all implementing types/fields but not on their implemented interface types/fields, they could be impacted.
Scope of Impact
This vulnerability could allow a malicious actor to craft a query that can bypass access control requirements on the object types/fields by instead querying them via implemented interface types/fields that don't have the same access control requirements.
Patches
This vulnerability has been fixed at runtime in Apollo Router. You may update Router to one of the following versions:
- 1.61.12+
- 2.8.1+
Workarounds
- If you are not immediately updating Router to a patched version, you should apply any included access control requirements to both the appropriate interface types/fields and their implementations.
- Customers not using Apollo Router access control features (
@authenticated,@requiresScopes, or@policydirectives) or not specifying inconsistent access control requirements on polymorphic types/fields are not affected and do not need to take action.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | apollo-router | all versions | 1.61.12cargo update -p apollo-router --precise 1.61.12 |
| 🦀crates.io | apollo-router | ≥ 2.0.0-alpha.0&&< 2.8.1 | 2.8.1cargo update -p apollo-router --precise 2.8.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for apollo-router, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update apollo-router to 1.61.12 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-64173 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-2025-64173 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-64173. 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-2025-64173 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-64173 across crates.io dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.