GHSA-vjjx-rfw4-rmfc
SurrealDB: Graph traversal bypasses table SELECT permissions
Packages
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
An authenticated record or scope user could read records on any table reachable through a graph edge or `REFERENCES TO` back-reference, regardless of that table's `PERMISSIONS FOR select` clause.
Traversing `SELECT * FROM source->edge->target` returned full documents from `target` even when `target` was defined as `PERMISSIONS FOR select NONE`. The same bypass extended through multi-hop chains, so any table reachable by a sequence of edges from a readable starting point was exposed.
The root cause: `GraphEdgeScan` and `ReferenceScan` fetched records straight from storage without routing them through `Document::pluck_select`, so the target table's permission expression was never consulted.
### Impact
An authenticated record or scope user can read records on any table reachable through a chain of graph edges or back-references from a table they have `select` on, regardless of the target's `PERMISSIONS FOR select` clause. Confidentiality-only and bounded to the caller's current database — namespace and database isolation are unaffected.
### Patches
A new per-batch permission cache (`exec::permission::CachedTableSelect`) resolves each target table's `SELECT` permission once and filters yielded values through `check_permission_for_value`, matching the regular `SELECT` code path.
- Versions 3.1.0 and later are not affected.
### Workarounds
- Remove `select` permission on edge tables whose targets should be hidden.
- Use namespace or database isolation as the primary boundary where feasible.
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.