Overview
CVE-2025-64530 is a high-severity vulnerability affecting Apollo Federation, an architecture designed for composing APIs into a unified graph. This vulnerability allows certain queries to Apollo Router to bypass access controls on types and fields, potentially leading to unauthorized data access and privilege escalation.
Technical Details
The vulnerability lies in the composition logic of Apollo Federation versions prior to 2.9.5, 2.10.4, 2.11.5, and 2.12.1. It stems from the incorrect handling of user-defined access control directives on interface types and fields. Specifically, Apollo Federation incorrectly permitted the use of access control directives (like `@authenticated`, `@requiresScopes`, or `@policy`) on interface types and fields. An attacker could bypass these controls by querying the implementing object types and fields directly via inline fragments. Because the composition logic did not correctly propagate these access controls to the implementing object types, Apollo Router would not enforce the intended security policies for these queries.
For example, consider the following schema:
interface Node @authenticated {
id: ID!
}
type User implements Node {
id: ID!
name: String
}
query {
node(id: "123") {
... on User {
name
}
}
}
In this example, the `@authenticated` directive on the `Node` interface should require authentication for accessing any field on objects implementing the `Node` interface. However, the vulnerability allowed unauthenticated users to access the `name` field of the `User` type by using the inline fragment, bypassing the intended access control.
CVSS Analysis
- CVE ID: CVE-2025-64530
- Severity: HIGH
- CVSS Score: 7.5
A CVSS score of 7.5 indicates a high-severity vulnerability. This score reflects the potential for significant impact, including unauthorized access to sensitive data and potential privilege escalation.
Possible Impact
Successful exploitation of CVE-2025-64530 can have serious consequences, including:
- Data Breach: Unauthorized access to sensitive data exposed through the GraphQL API.
- Privilege Escalation: Attackers may gain access to resources and functionalities that they are not authorized to use.
- Service Disruption: In some cases, exploitation could lead to denial-of-service conditions or other disruptions.
- Reputational Damage: A successful attack can damage the organization’s reputation and erode customer trust.
Mitigation or Patch Steps
The recommended mitigation is to upgrade to the patched versions of Apollo Federation’s composition logic:
- Version 2.9.5 or higher
- Version 2.10.4 or higher
- Version 2.11.5 or higher
- Version 2.12.1 or higher
Workarounds (for unpatched systems):
If upgrading is not immediately possible, consider the following workarounds:
- Manual Access Control Replication: For users of Apollo Rover with an unpatched composition version or using the Apollo Studio build pipeline with Federation version 2.8 or below, manually copy the access control requirements on interface types and fields to each implementing object type and field where appropriate.
- Important: Do not remove those access control requirements from the interface types and fields, as unpatched Apollo Composition will not automatically generate them in the supergraph schema.
Note: If you are not using Apollo Router access control features (`@authenticated`, `@requiresScopes`, or `@policy` directives) or not specifying access control requirements on interface types/fields, you are not affected and do not need to take action.
