Apollo Router Query Planner Vulnerable to Excessive Resource Consumption via Named Fragment ExpansionGHSA-75m2-jhh5-j5g2
HIGHFix: apollographql/router@ab6675aGHSA-75m2-jhh5-j5g2 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in apollo-router. A fix is available for apollo-router — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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 GHSA-75m2-jhh5-j5g2.
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
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
Impact
Summary
A vulnerability in Apollo Router allowed queries with deeply nested and reused named fragments to be prohibitively expensive to query plan, specifically during named fragment expansion. This could lead to excessive resource consumption and denial of service.
Details
Named fragments were being expanded once per fragment spread during query planning, leading to exponential resource usage when deeply nested and reused fragments were involved.
Fix/Mitigation
A new Query Fragment Expansion Limit metric has been introduced:
- This metric computes the number of selections a query would have if its fragment spreads were fully expanded.
- The metric is checked against a limit to prevent excessive computation.
Patches
This has been remediated in apollo-router versions 1.61.2 and 2.1.1.
Workarounds
The only known workaround is "Safelisting" or "Safelisting with IDs only" per Safelisting with Persisted Queries - Apollo GraphQL Docs.
References
Acknowledgements
We appreciate the efforts of the security community in identifying and improving the performance and security of query planning mechanisms.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | apollo-router | all versions | 1.61.2cargo update -p apollo-router --precise 1.61.2 |
| 🦀crates.io | apollo-router | ≥ 2.0.0-alpha.0&&< 2.1.1 | 2.1.1cargo update -p apollo-router --precise 2.1.1 |
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 1.61.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-75m2-jhh5-j5g2 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-75m2-jhh5-j5g2 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.