Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 5.9

CVE-2020-4035 json

DoS or local data modification via malicious record IDs in WatermelonDB

published 2020-06-03 6 y ago modified 2026-07-08 4 mo ago also GHSA-38f9-m297-6q9g , EUVD-2020-0454

cvss
5.9
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.8%
EPSS 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 55%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In WatermelonDB (NPM package "@nozbe/watermelondb") before versions 0.15.1 and 0.16.2, a maliciously crafted record ID can exploit a SQL Injection vulnerability in iOS adapter implementation and cause the app to delete all or selected records from the database, generally causing the app to become unusable. This may happen in apps that don't validate IDs (valid IDs are `/^[a-zA-Z0-9_-.]+$/`) and use Watermelon Sync or low-level `database.adapter.destroyDeletedRecords` method. The integrity risk is low due to the fact that maliciously deleted records won't synchronize, so logout-login will restore all data, although some local changes may be lost if the malicious deletion causes the sync process to fail to proceed to push stage. No way to breach confidentiality with this vulnerability is known. Full exploitation of SQL Injection is mitigated, because it's not possible to nest an insert/update query inside a delete query in SQLite, and it's not possible to pass a semicolon-separated second query. There's also no known practicable way to breach confidentiality by selectively deleting records, because those records will not be synchronized. It's theoretically possible that selective record deletion could cause an app to behave insecurely if lack of a record is used to make security decisions by the app. This is patched in versions 0.15.1, 0.16.2, and 0.16.1-fix

Patch / fix

  • npm @nozbe/watermelondb 0.15.1, 0.16.2
  • nozbe watermelondb 0.15.1

Exploit prediction

0.76% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 55% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H
NVD 3.1 5.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.1 5.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm @nozbe/watermelondb
<0.15.1
>=0.16.0, <0.16.2
0.15.1
0.16.2

Affected products

  • Nozbe WatermelonDB

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-89 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.