Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 5.4

CVE-2025-27089 json

Overlapping policies allow update to non-allowed fields in directus

published 2025-02-19 20 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-4664 , GHSA-99vm-5v2h-h6r6

cvss
5.4
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 14%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Directus is a real-time API and App dashboard for managing SQL database content. In affected versions if there are two overlapping policies for the `update` action that allow access to different fields, instead of correctly checking access permissions against the item they apply for the user is allowed to update the superset of fields allowed by any of the policies. E.g. have one policy allowing update access to `field_a` if the `id == 1` and one policy allowing update access to `field_b` if the `id == 2`. The user with both these policies is allowed to update both `field_a` and `field_b` for the items with ids `1` and `2`. Before v11, if a user was allowed to update an item they were allowed to update the fields that the single permission, that applied to that item, listed. With overlapping permissions this isn't as clear cut anymore and the union of fields might not be the fields the user is allowed to update for that specific item. The solution that this PR introduces is to evaluate the permissions for each field that the user tries to update in the validateItemAccess DB query, instead of only verifying access to the item as a whole. This is done by, instead of returning the actual field value, returning a flag that indicates if the user has access to that field. This uses the same case/when mechanism that is used for stripping out non permitted field that is at the core of the permissions engine. As a result, for every item that the access is validated for, the expected result is an item that has either 1 or null for all the "requested" fields instead of any of the actual field values. These results are not useful for anything other than verifying the field level access permissions. The final check in validateItemAccess can either fail if the number of items does not match the number of items the access is checked for (ie. the user does not have access to the item at all) or if not all of the passed in fields have access permissions for any of the returned items. This is a vulnerability that allows update access to unintended fields, potentially impacting the password field for user accounts. This has been addressed in version 11.1.2 and all users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Patch / fix

  • npm directus 11.1.2
  • npm @directus/api 23.1.0
  • monospace directus 11.1.2
  • rangerstudio directus 11.1.2

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
20 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 14% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
GitHub 3.1 5.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
NVD 3.1 4.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm directus
>=11.0.0, <11.1.2
11.1.2
npm @directus/api
>=22.0.0, <23.1.0
23.1.0

Affected products

  • directus directus

Classification

Weakness

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.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.