GHSA-6q22-g298-grjh — directus
HIGHGHSA-6q22-g298-grjh is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) vulnerability in directus. A fix is available for directus — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Directus: Unauthenticated Denial of Service via GraphQL Alias Amplification of Expensive Health Check Resolver
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
Summary
The GraphQL specification permits a single query to repeat the same field multiple times using aliases, with each alias resolved independently by default. Directus did not deduplicate resolver invocations within a single request, meaning each alias triggered a full, independent execution of the underlying resolver.
The health check resolver ran all backend checks (database connectivity, cache, storage writes, and SMTP verification) on every invocation. Combined with unauthenticated access to the system GraphQL endpoint, this allowed an attacker to amplify resource consumption significantly from a single HTTP request, exhausting the database connection pool, storage I/O, and SMTP connections.
Fix
A request-scoped resolver deduplication mechanism was introduced and applied broadly across all GraphQL read resolvers, both system and items endpoints. When multiple aliases in a single request invoke the same resolver with identical arguments, only the first call executes; all subsequent aliases share its result. This eliminates the amplification factor regardless of how many aliases an attacker includes in a query.
Impact
- Service degradation or outage: Database connection pool exhaustion prevents all Directus operations for all users
- Storage I/O saturation: Concurrent file writes can overwhelm disk I/O
- SMTP resource exhaustion: Concurrent SMTP verification calls may overwhelm the mail server
- No authentication required: Any network-accessible attacker can trigger this condition
- Single-request impact: A single request is sufficient to cause significant resource consumption
Credit
This vulnerability was discovered and reported by bugbunny.ai.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | directus | all versions | 11.17.0npm install directus@11.17.0 |
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 11.17.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-6q22-g298-grjh 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 GHSA-6q22-g298-grjh can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-6q22-g298-grjh. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-6q22-g298-grjh in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-6q22-g298-grjh across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.