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GHSA-fpxg-5xmv-922m
No affected components available
SurrealDB lets callers modify records using JSON Patch operations via the UPDATE … PATCH statement (and SDK equivalents such as db.patch()). One of those operations is copy, which duplicates one field's value into another field of the same record. A PATCH with an empty from — for example, UPDATE thing:1 PATCH [{ op: 'copy', from: '', path: '/leak' }] — was treated as "copy the entire record" and duplicated every field, including fields the caller has no permission to read, into the destination field the caller chose. The permission filter that hides protected field values from the response only knew to hide the original protected field names, not the new destinations, so the protected values were returned to the caller intact under the new field name.
Impact
An authenticated user with permission to issue UPDATE … PATCH against a record could read the values of any field on that record, regardless of field-level PERMISSIONS FOR select restrictions. The leak is confidentiality-only, and bounded to the fields of the single record the caller targets per PATCH request — it does not expose other records on the same table or any data outside that record's scope.
Patches
A patch has been introduced that rejects an empty from pointer at parse time for both copy and move operations.
- Versions 3.1.0 and later are not affected by this issue.
Workarounds
Affected users who are unable to update should restrict UPDATE … PATCH to callers who already hold SELECT permission on every field of the target record — for them, the bug exposes nothing they can't already read. Otherwise, switch the mutation to an explicit SET or MERGE clause, which removes the attack surface since neither form accepts JSON Patch operations.
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a low impact on the confidentiality of the information.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
Probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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