CVE-2025-27089 Overlapping policies allow update to non-allowed fields in directus

Medium 5.4 Published 19 Feb 2025 Updated 19 Feb 2025

Overlapping policies in Directus allow users to modify fields they should not have access to by combining permissions from multiple policies.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2025-27089?

CVE-2025-27089 is a medium-severity missing authorization vulnerability in Monospace Directus, published on 19 Feb 2025. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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.

Weakness: CWE-863

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-27089?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including @directus/api and directus. It affects 1 product.

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`@directus/api` npm	From `22.0.0`	`23.1.0`
`@directus/api` npm	From `22.0.0`	`23.1.0`
`directus` npm	From `11.0.0`	`11.1.2`
`directus` npm	From `11.0.0`	`11.1.2`

Products include Monospace Directus.

How do I fix CVE-2025-27089?

Upgrade @directus/api to 23.1.0 or later.

Upgrade, and check permissions on every request on the server, not only in the interface. More about Missing authorization.

Is CVE-2025-27089 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2025-27089 exists.

All Monospace Directus vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-99vm-5v2h-h6r6.