CVE-2025-48043

EPSS 0.12%

Ash Framework: Filter authorization misapplies impossible bypass/runtime policies

Published: 10/13/2025Modified: 4/6/2026

Description

### Summary When using **filter** authorization, two edge cases could cause the policy compiler/authorizer to generate a permissive filter: 1. **Bypass policies whose condition can never pass at runtime** were compiled as `OR(AND(condition, compiled_policies), NOT(condition))`. If the condition could never be true at runtime, the `NOT(condition)` branch evaluated truthy and the overall expression became permissive. 2. **Runtime policy scenarios that reduce to “no checks are applicable”** (an empty SAT scenario) were treated as an empty clause and dropped instead of being treated as **`false`**, which could again produce an overly broad (permissive) filter. These bugs could allow reads to return records that should have been excluded by policy. ### Impact Projects that rely on **filter-based authorization** and define: * `bypass ... do ... end` blocks whose condition(s) are only resolvable at runtime and can never pass in a given request context, **or** * runtime checks that simplify to an **empty** scenario for a clause may unintentionally generate a permissive query filter, potentially returning unauthorized data. *Actions primarily affected:* reads guarded by filter policies. Non-filter (e.g., hard forbid) policies are not impacted. ### Technical details This patch corrects two behaviors: * **`Ash.Policy.Policy.compile_policy_expression/1`** now treats **bypass** blocks as `AND(condition_expression, compiled_policies)` instead of `OR(AND(...), NOT(condition_expression))`. This removes the permissive `NOT(condition)` escape hatch when a bypass condition never passes. * **`Ash.Policy.Authorizer`** now treats **empty SAT scenarios** (`scenario == %{}`) as **`false`**, ensuring impossible scenarios do not collapse into a no-op and inadvertently widen the filter. The reducer also normalizes `nil` → `false` consistently when building `auto_filter` fragments. Relevant changes are in: * `lib/ash/policy/policy.ex` (bypass compilation) * `lib/ash/policy/authorizer/authorizer.ex` (scenario handling / auto_filter normalization) * Tests added: `test/policy/filter_condition_test.exs` (`RuntimeFalsyCheck`, `RuntimeBypassResource`) validate the corrected behavior. ### Workarounds * Avoid `bypass` policies whose conditions are only decidable at runtime and may be perpetually false in some contexts; prefer explicit `authorize_if`/`forbid_if` blocks without `bypass` for those cases. * Add an explicit **final `forbid_if always()`** guard for sensitive reads as a belt-and-suspenders fallback until user can upgrade. * Where feasible, replace runtime-unknown checks with strict/compile-time checks or restructure to avoid empty SAT scenarios. ### How to tell if user is affected User is likely affected if ALL of the following are true: * Uses **filter authorization**; and * Defines `bypass` block with `access_type :runtime` without any policies after it; or * Defines `bypass` blocks whose conditions are evaluated at runtime (e.g., checks with `strict_check/3` returning `:unknown` and a runtime `check/4` that may never succeed in some contexts) without any policies after it A quick sanity test is to issue a read expected to return **no** rows under such a bypass or runtime-falsy condition and verify it indeed returns `[]`. The included test `bypass works with filter policies` demonstrates the corrected, non-permissive behavior.

Affected packages (1)

CVSS scores

SourceVersionSeverityVector
osvCVSS 4.0—CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

References (7)