GHSA-q2f9-x4p4-7xmh
HIGHApollo Gateway Query Planner Vulnerable to Excessive Resource Consumption via Named Fragment Expansion
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.
@apollo/gatewaynpmDescription
Impact
Summary
A vulnerability in Apollo Gateway allowed queries with deeply nested and reused named fragments to be prohibitively expensive to query plan, specifically during named fragment expansion. This could lead to excessive resource consumption and denial of service.
Details
Named fragments were being expanded once per fragment spread during query planning, leading to exponential resource usage when deeply nested and reused fragments were involved.
Fix/Mitigation
A new Query Fragment Expansion Limit metric has been introduced:
- This metric computes the number of selections a query would have if its fragment spreads were fully expanded.
- The metric is checked against a limit to prevent excessive computation.
Patches
This has been remediated in @apollo/gateway version 2.10.1.
Workarounds
No known direct workarounds exist.
References
Acknowledgements
We appreciate the efforts of the security community in identifying and improving the performance and security of query planning mechanisms.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | @apollo/gateway | all versions | 2.10.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for @apollo/gateway. 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 @apollo/gateway to 2.10.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-q2f9-x4p4-7xmh 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-q2f9-x4p4-7xmh 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-q2f9-x4p4-7xmh. 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-q2f9-x4p4-7xmh in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-q2f9-x4p4-7xmh across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.