GHSA-ph52-67fq-75wj — directus
MEDIUMGHSA-ph52-67fq-75wj is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in directus. A fix is available for directus — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Directus: GraphQL Alias Amplification Denial of Service Due to Missing Query Cost/Complexity Limits
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-ph52-67fq-75wj.
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-ph52-67fq-75wj 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 379,842 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
Directus' GraphQL endpoints (/graphql and /graphql/system) did not deduplicate resolver invocations within a single request. An authenticated user could exploit GraphQL aliasing to repeat an expensive relational query many times in a single request, forcing the server to execute a large number of independent complex database queries concurrently, multiplying database load linearly with the number of aliases. The existing token limit on GraphQL queries still permitted enough aliases for significant resource exhaustion, while the relational depth limit applied per alias without reducing the total number executed. Rate limiting is disabled by default, meaning no built-in throttle prevented this from causing CPU, memory, and I/O exhaustion that could degrade or crash the service. Any authenticated user, including those with minimal read-only permissions, could trigger this condition.
Fix
A request-scoped resolver deduplication mechanism was introduced and applied broadly across all GraphQL read resolvers, both system and items endpoints. When multiple aliases in a single request invoke the same resolver with identical arguments, only the first call executes; all subsequent aliases share its result. This eliminates the amplification factor regardless of how many aliases a query contains.
Impact
- Service degradation or outage: Concurrent complex database queries exhaust the connection pool and server resources, affecting all users
- Low privilege required: Any authenticated user, including those with read-only access to a single collection, can trigger this condition
- Linear scaling: Impact scales with the number of aliases and depth of relational queries
- Compounded by concurrency: Multiple simultaneous requests multiply the effect further
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | directus | all versions | 11.17.0npm install directus@11.17.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for directus, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update directus to 11.17.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-ph52-67fq-75wj 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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-ph52-67fq-75wj can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-ph52-67fq-75wj. 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-ph52-67fq-75wj in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-ph52-67fq-75wj across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.