GHSA-j5h6-vqc3-phqh is a high-severity (CVSS 7.7) Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in directus. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-j5h6-vqc3-phqh is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Directus: SSRF Protection Bypass via 0.0.0.0 in File Import
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-j5h6-vqc3-phqh.
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
GHSA-j5h6-vqc3-phqh 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 367,633 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
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 SSRF protection on Directus's file-import-from-URL feature can be bypassed using the address 0.0.0.0. While 127.0.0.1 and other internal addresses are denied, 0.0.0.0 is not added to the blocklist. On Linux and macOS, connecting to 0.0.0.0 reaches localhost, so an authenticated user with file-upload rights can make the server fetch internal services and retrieve the response as a downloadable file (full-read SSRF).
Affected Versions
- Affected: Directus
<= 12.0.0(confirmed ondirectus/directus:latest, v11.17.3, with default configuration) - Patched: Directus
>= 12.0.0
Details
Directus uses a deny-list config, IMPORT_IP_DENY_LIST, whose default value is ['0.0.0.0', '169.254.169.254'].
The issue is in how api/src/request/is-denied-ip.ts processes this list. When it encounters the entry 0.0.0.0, it treats it as a special keyword meaning "block all local network interfaces," but it never blocks the literal address 0.0.0.0 itself. The handler sets the network-interface flag and skips to the next entry without adding 0.0.0.0 to the blocklist.
What actually gets blocked is the loopback subnet 127.0.0.0/8 (from the lo interface) plus whatever addresses are assigned to the machine's network interfaces. The address 0.0.0.0 is not inside 127.0.0.0/8; it belongs to the separate 0.0.0.0/8 range. So a request to http://0.0.0.0:8055/ passes the blocklist check as "allowed."
At the OS level, however, connecting to 0.0.0.0 reaches localhost, functionally equivalent to 127.0.0.1. The same gap applies to the IPv6 unspecified address ::. As a result, the SSRF protection is bypassed.
Impact
An authenticated user with create permission on directus_files (file-upload rights) can make the server issue requests to its own localhost via the /files/import endpoint. The response body is stored as a downloadable file, making this a full-read SSRF. On bare-metal or single-host deployments, this can reach databases, caches, and internal APIs bound to localhost. This bypass defeats the protections tracked as CVE-2026-35409 and CVE-2024-46990.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | directus | all versions | 12.0.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for directus. 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 to 12.0.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-j5h6-vqc3-phqh 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-j5h6-vqc3-phqh 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-j5h6-vqc3-phqh. 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-j5h6-vqc3-phqh in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-j5h6-vqc3-phqh across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.