GHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx — @directus/storage-driver-…
MEDIUMGHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-770 vulnerability in @directus/storage-driver-s3. A fix is available for @directus/storage-driver-s3 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Directus's S3 assets become unavailable after a burst of malformed transformations
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx.
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-j8xj-7jff-46mx 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 377,636 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.
@directus/storage-driver-s3npmdirectusnpmDescription
Summary
When making many malformed transformation requests at once, at some point, all assets are being served as 403.
Details
When I was investigating this issue, I have found that after a burst of malformed asset transformation requests, the amount of sockets held on Agent on NodeHttpHandler was always equal to STORAGE_CLOUD_MAX_SOCKETS making it impossible to have new connections causing assets to be inaccessible.
After looking into this issue on AWS SDK I found that if the stream is requested, it needs to be consumed otherwise will hang forever. And as can be seen here the stream is not consumed, because sharp will throw an error on the invalid arguments. For example ?height=xyz
The timeouts set here had no noticeable effect on tests made.
PoC
This can be easily reproduced with the following steps:
- setup AWS S3 storage
- set STORAGE_CLOUD_MAX_SOCKETS: "50" (this value is lower than default for easier reproduction)
- upload a file to your project
- run this file (Replace the the file ID with the one you just uploaded):
import axios from "axios";
async function start() {
Array.from({ length: 400 }, (_, i) => {
axios
.get(
"http://localhost:8055/assets/e536aa35-3a81-4fa9-b856-3780584d38d8?width=100&height=XYZ"
)
.then(() => console.log("✅"))
.catch((e) =>
console.log("⛔", e.response?.status || e.code || e.message)
);
});
}
start();
Here's an example:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7f5a6f51-1c51-4d4d-aa4f-c4953e91714c
Impact
This causes denial of assets for all policies of Directus, including Admin and Public.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | @directus/storage-driver-s3 | ≥ 9.22.0&&< 12.0.1 | 12.0.1npm install @directus/storage-driver-s3@12.0.1 |
| 📦npm | directus | ≥ 9.22.0&&< 11.5.0 | 11.5.0npm install directus@11.5.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for @directus/storage-driver-s3, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update @directus/storage-driver-s3 to 12.0.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx 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-j8xj-7jff-46mx can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx. 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-j8xj-7jff-46mx in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.