OpenFGA up to 1.8.12 improper authorization

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability has been found in OpenFGA up to 1.8.12 and classified as critical. The impacted element is an unknown function. This manipulation causes improper authorization. This vulnerability is registered as CVE-2025-48371. Remote exploitation of the attack is possible. No exploit is available. The affected component should be upgraded.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in OpenFGA up to 1.8.12. It has been declared as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown part. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a improper authorization vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-285. The product does not perform or incorrectly performs an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

OpenFGA is an authorization/permission engine. OpenFGA versions 1.8.0 through 1.8.12 (corresponding to Helm chart openfga-0.2.16 through openfga-0.2.30 and docker 1.8.0 through 1.8.12) are vulnerable to authorization bypass when certain Check and ListObject calls are executed. Users are affected under four specific conditions: First, calling Check API or ListObjects with an authorization model that has a relationship directly assignable by both type bound public access and userset; second, there are check or list object queries with contextual tuples for the relationship that can be directly assignable by both type bound public access and userset; third, those contextual tuples’s user field is an userset; and finally, type bound public access tuples are not assigned to the relationship. Users should upgrade to version 1.8.13 to receive a patch. The upgrade is backwards compatible.

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2025-48371 since 05/19/2025. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1548.002 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

Upgrading to version 1.8.13 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch e5960d4eba92b723de8ff3a5346a07f50c1379ca is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

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Productinfo

Name

• OpenFGA

Version

• 1.8.0
• 1.8.1
• 1.8.2
• 1.8.3
• 1.8.4
• 1.8.5
• 1.8.6
• 1.8.7
• 1.8.8
• 1.8.9
• 1.8.10
• 1.8.11
• 1.8.12

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://github.com/openfga/openfga/

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