GHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx
MEDIUMDirectus's S3 assets become unavailable after a burst of malformed transformations
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.
Blast Radius
Weekly download volume for affected packages — a proxy for how broadly this vulnerability is deployed.
@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 | 12.0.1 |
| 📦npm | directus | ≥ 9.22.0&&< 11.5.0 | 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. 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/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 pinpoints whether GHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx 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-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 detects GHSA-j8xj-7jff-46mx across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.