Directus' insufficient permission checks can enable unauthenticated users to manually trigger Flows

Description

Summary

Directus Flows with a manual trigger are not validating whether the user triggering the Flow has permissions to the items provided as payload to the Flow. Depending on what the Flow is set up to do this can lead to the Flow executing potential tasks on the attacker's behalf without authenticating.

Impact

Bad actors could execute the manual trigger Flows without authentication, or access rights to the said collection(s) or item(s).

Users with manual trigger Flows configured are impacted as these endpoints do not currently validate if the user has read access to directus_flows or to the relevant collection/items. The manual trigger Flows should have tighter security requirements as compared to webhook Flows where users are expected to perform do their own checks.

Workarounds

Users have to implement permission checks for read access to Flows and read access to relevant collection/items.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
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Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
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Published (advisory)
2025-07-15 15:36:59 UTC
Updated
2025-07-15 15:37:02 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2025-07-15 15:36:59 UTC
NVD published
2025-07-15 00:15:23 UTC

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.07% 22.61%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
6.5 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N 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:L)
Some sensitive info could get out, but not a total data dump.
Integrity (I:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-285 Improper Authorization
CWE-287 Improper Authentication

Credits

  • licitdev (finder)

Affected packages (1)

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

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
npm directus < 11.9.0 11.9.0

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence