GHSA-64f8-pjgr-9wmr is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) CWE-75 vulnerability in surrealdb. A fix is available for surrealdb — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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 GHSA-64f8-pjgr-9wmr.
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
surrealdb🦀surrealdb-core🦀surrealdbReal-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
During the sign in and sign up operations through the SurrealDB RPC API, an arbitrary object would be accepted in order to support a wide array of types and structures that could contain user credentials. This arbitrary object could potentially contain any SurrealDB value, including an object representing a subquery. For this to materialize, this object would need to be encoded using the bincode serialization format instead of the default JSON serialization format or the additionally supported CBOR serialization format.
If a binary object containing a subquery were to be provided in this way, that subquery would be computed while executing the SIGNIN and SIGNUP queries defined by the database owner while defining a record access method. Since those queries are executed under a system user session with the editor role, an unauthenticated attacker may be able to leverage this behavior to select, create, update and delete non-IAM resources with permissions of a system user with the editor role.
Impact
If a record access method was defined with a SIGNIN or a SIGNUP query and the SurrealDB RPC API was exposed to untrusted users, an attacker could be able to craft a binary object containing a subquery to provide in place of valid credentials when calling the signin and signup operations via the RPC API with the bincode serialization format. The attacker could use that subquery to select, create, update and delete resources in SurrealDB, but they would not be able to directly view the results of the query. This method cannot be used to create, update or delete IAM resources, as access to those kind of resources requires the owner role.
Patches
Objects provided as variables to the sign in and sign up methods are now recursively validated to ensure that they do not contain any non-computed values, which include subqueries and other data types that could potentially result in query execution.
- Version 1.5.5 and later are not affected by this issue.
- Version 2.0.0-beta.3 and later are not affected by this issue.
Workarounds
Users unable to update may want to disallow access to the SurrealDB RPC API using the affected binary serialization formats by conservatively allowing only requests to the /rpc endpoint of the SurrealDB HTTP server with the application/json content type. If the RPC API is not used at all or only used by trusted clients, disallowing or restricting access to the /rpc endpoint of the SurrealDB HTTP server will also prevent exploitation. Alternatively, if filtering HTTP requests is not possible, record access methods that define SIGNIN and SIGNUP clauses may be temporarily removed to completely prevent potential attacks leveraging this issue.
References
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | surrealdb | all versions | 1.5.5cargo update -p surrealdb --precise 1.5.5 |
| 🦀crates.io | surrealdb-core | all versions | 1.5.2cargo update -p surrealdb-core --precise 1.5.2 |
| 🦀crates.io | surrealdb | ≥ 2.0.0-beta.1&&< 2.0.0-beta.3 | 2.0.0-beta.3cargo update -p surrealdb --precise 2.0.0-beta.3 |
Affected Products
surrealdbsurrealdbDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for surrealdb, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update surrealdb to 1.5.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-64f8-pjgr-9wmr 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-64f8-pjgr-9wmr in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.