CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-27481

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Mar 07, 2023 | Modified: Mar 14, 2023
CVSS 3.x
4.3
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Directus is a real-time API and App dashboard for managing SQL database content. In versions prior to 9.16.0 users with read access to the password field in directus_users can extract the argon2 password hashes by brute forcing the export functionality combined with a _starts_with filter. This allows the user to enumerate the password hashes. Accounts cannot be taken over unless the hashes can be reversed which is unlikely with current hardware. This problem has been patched by preventing any hashed/concealed field to be filtered against with the _starts_with or other string operator in version 9.16.0. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade may mitigate this issue by ensuring that no user has read access to the password field in directus_users.

Weakness

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Directus Monospace * 9.16.0 (excluding)

Extended Description

There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:

Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:

Information exposures can occur in different ways:

It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References