CVE-2026-35441 Details

A denial-of-service vulnerability has been identified in Directus versions prior to 11.17.0. The issue arises in the GraphQL endpoints '/graphql' and '/graphql/system', where resolver invocations within a single request are not deduplicated. This allows an authenticated user to exploit GraphQL aliasing, repeating costly relational queries multiple times in one request. As a result, the server must handle a large number of independent, complex database queries simultaneously, increasing database load in proportion to the number of aliases used. Although there is a token limit on GraphQL queries, it still allows for enough aliases to cause significant resource exhaustion. The absence of default rate limiting means that this exploitation can lead to excessive CPU, memory, and I/O usage, potentially degrading or crashing the service. This vulnerability can be triggered by any authenticated user, including those with minimal read-only permissions.

Users can upgrade to Directus version 11.17.0 or later, where this vulnerability has been addressed by introducing a request-scoped resolver deduplication mechanism. This new mechanism ensures that when multiple aliases in a single request call the same resolver with the same arguments, only the first invocation is executed, while subsequent aliases share the result. This change effectively removes the amplification factor, regardless of the number of aliases in a query.