Apollo Router Query Validation Vulnerable to Excessive Resource Consumption via Named Fragment Processing

Description

Impact

Summary

A vulnerability in Apollo Router's usage of Apollo Compiler allowed queries with deeply nested and reused named fragments to be prohibitively expensive to validate. This could lead to excessive resource consumption and denial of service.

Details

Named fragments were being processed once per fragment spread in some cases during query validation, leading to exponential resource usage when deeply nested and reused fragments were involved.

Fix/Mitigation

Apollo Router's usage of Apollo Compiler has been updated so that validation logic processes each named fragment only once, preventing redundant traversal.

Patches

This has been remediated in apollo-router versions 1.61.2 and 2.1.1.

Workarounds

The only known workaround is "Safelisting with IDs only" per Safelisting with Persisted Queries - Apollo GraphQL Docs. The "Safelisting" security level is not sufficient, since that level allows freeform GraphQL queries to be sent to Apollo Router.

References

Query Planning Documentation

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the efforts of the security community in identifying and improving the performance and security of query validation mechanisms.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
high
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2025-04-07 19:00:30 UTC
Updated
2025-04-09 19:53:50 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2025-04-07 19:00:30 UTC
NVD published
2025-04-09

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.53% 66.90%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
7.5 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Credits

  • yo-artyom (reporter)

Affected packages (2)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
rust apollo-router < 1.61.2 1.61.2
rust apollo-router >= 2.0.0-alpha.0, < 2.1.1 2.1.1

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence