Directus: Authorization-dependent response served from unsegmented cache key

Overview

Summary

When response caching is enabled (CACHE_ENABLED=true), the cache-key derivation in api/src/utils/get-cache-key.ts includes only version, path, query, and accountability.user (plus a conditional ip). Authorization context beyond user (share, role, roles, admin, app, policies) is not part of the key.

For share tokens this is load-bearing. Directus's share-authentication flow (api/src/services/shares.ts:100-105) issues a JWT without an id claim, so api/src/utils/get-accountability-for-token.ts never assigns accountability.user, leaving it null (the default from create-default-accountability.ts). Every share token, and every anonymous request, therefore reduces to user: null in the cache-key input. Two different shares (or an anonymous request and a share token) requesting the same URL with the same query produce identical cache keys. The first request populates the bucket with a permission-filtered response; subsequent hits from unrelated shares or anonymous clients receive that payload without any permission re-evaluation.

This is the web-cache pattern "authorization-dependent response cached under an unsegmented key" (cache key collision / missing authorization context in cache key, CWE-524 and CWE-639). Two adjacent read populations collide:

• Share to share: Share A populates the cache, Share B reads Share A's scoped response.
• Share to anonymous (and the reverse): any unauthenticated client hitting the same URL retrieves cached share-scoped data without presenting any token.

Affected

• Config required: CACHE_ENABLED=true (any store: memory, redis, memcached) plus at least one active directus_shares row. This is not a default-on bug: CACHE_ENABLED ships as false. The cache is documented as a production performance setting, so operators who enable it are the ones affected.

Vulnerability class

• CWE-524: Use of Cache Containing Sensitive Information
• CWE-639: Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key (the key here is the derived cache key, not the URL)
• OWASP API3:2023: Broken Object Property Level Authorization

Impact

• Cross-share confidentiality breach. Any share's filtered response can be served to a holder of a different share token, or to an anonymous request, that hits the same URL and query. Shares are advertised as a mechanism to distribute scoped, read-only access to specific items; this bug makes every cached share response readable by any other share-token holder who can reach the URL (the item-detail admin UI uses a predictable pattern).
• Anonymous request can read share data. Anonymous requests also compute user=null. An anonymous client hitting /items/articles?fields=* after a share request has populated the cache receives the share's scoped payload with zero authentication.
• Password-protected share, derivative effect. Password protection lives only at shares.login (JWT issuance). Once any share has populated the cache for a URL, an anonymous or alternate-share request to that URL retrieves the cached payload without exchanging the share password. This is the same cache-key collision surfacing as a password-protection bypass symptom, not a distinct mechanism.
• Persistence. The leak persists for the CACHE_TTL window (commonly 5 to 30 minutes). CACHE_AUTO_PURGE clears on mutating writes to cached collections but does not purge per-user or per-share. With CACHE_STORE=redis (common in production) the poisoned bucket survives server restarts.
• No write impact. The bypass is read-only.

Scope of the leak depends on the share's permission surface. A share with no backing role (directus_shares.role = null, the default) collapses visibility to the primary key, so the cache leaks only PKs. A share backed by a role with broader field access (the intended production setup for distributing useful content) leaks the full content that role can see on the scoped item.

Affected packages

• directus < 12.0.0

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• directus 12.0.0