Directus: SSRF Protection Bypass via 0.0.0.0 in File Import

Summary

The SSRF protection on Directus's file-import-from-URL feature can be bypassed using the address 0.0.0.0. While 127.0.0.1 and other internal addresses are denied, 0.0.0.0 is not added to the blocklist. On Linux and macOS, connecting to 0.0.0.0 reaches localhost, so an authenticated user with file-upload rights can make the server fetch internal services and retrieve the response as a downloadable file (full-read SSRF).

Affected Versions

• Affected: Directus <= 12.0.0 (confirmed on directus/directus:latest, v11.17.3, with default configuration)
• Patched: Directus >= 12.0.0

Details

Directus uses a deny-list config, IMPORT_IP_DENY_LIST, whose default value is ['0.0.0.0', '169.254.169.254'].

The issue is in how api/src/request/is-denied-ip.ts processes this list. When it encounters the entry 0.0.0.0, it treats it as a special keyword meaning "block all local network interfaces," but it never blocks the literal address 0.0.0.0 itself. The handler sets the network-interface flag and skips to the next entry without adding 0.0.0.0 to the blocklist.

What actually gets blocked is the loopback subnet 127.0.0.0/8 (from the lo interface) plus whatever addresses are assigned to the machine's network interfaces. The address 0.0.0.0 is not inside 127.0.0.0/8; it belongs to the separate 0.0.0.0/8 range. So a request to http://0.0.0.0:8055/ passes the blocklist check as "allowed."

At the OS level, however, connecting to 0.0.0.0 reaches localhost, functionally equivalent to 127.0.0.1. The same gap applies to the IPv6 unspecified address ::. As a result, the SSRF protection is bypassed.

Impact

An authenticated user with create permission on directus_files (file-upload rights) can make the server issue requests to its own localhost via the /files/import endpoint. The response body is stored as a downloadable file, making this a full-read SSRF. On bare-metal or single-host deployments, this can reach databases, caches, and internal APIs bound to localhost. This bypass defeats the protections tracked as CVE-2026-35409 and CVE-2024-46990.