CVE-2023-44401: Silverstripe GraqhQL's view permissions are bypassed for paginated lists of ORM data

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.3 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-01-23 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-863

Description

The Silverstripe CMS GraphQL Server serves Silverstripe data as GraphQL representations. In versions 4.0.0 prior to 4.3.7 and 5.0.0 prior to 5.1.3, `canView` permission checks are bypassed for ORM data in paginated GraphQL query results where the total number of records is greater than the number of records per page. Note that this also affects GraphQL queries which have a limit applied, even if the query isn’t paginated per se. This has been fixed in versions 4.3.7 and 5.1.3 by ensuring no new records are pulled in from the database after performing `canView` permission checks for each page of results. This may result in some pages in the query results having less than the maximum number of records per page even when there are more pages of results. This behavior is consistent with how pagination works in other areas of Silverstripe CMS, such as in `GridField`, and is a result of having to perform permission checks in PHP rather than in the database directly. One may disable these permission checks by disabling the `CanViewPermission` plugin.

Affected products

silverstripe-graphql: from 4.0.0 before 4.3.7; from 5.0.0 before 5.1.3 — fixed in 4.3.7, 5.1.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: silverstripe-graphql 4.3.7, 5.1.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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