How should we interpret CVSS severity scores?

CVSS estimates technical severity, but it does not automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, asset criticality, known exploitation, and whether compensating controls exist. A Medium CVSS on an exposed production system can be more urgent than a Critical on an isolated non-production host.

Vulnerability Database

Q: What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

Q: What's the difference between a vulnerability, an exploit, and a zero-day?

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. Risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Q: Why do vulnerabilities keep reappearing in our environment?

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete asset discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host.

Q: How do we prioritize remediation without burning out the team?

Use a repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress so remediation is steady, not reactive.

Q: How can SynScan help reduce vulnerability risk over time?

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.

362,557

Total vulnerabilities in the database

Full Table Permissions by Default — surrealdb

Default table permissions in SurrealDB were FULL instead of NONE. This would lead to tables having FULL permissions for SELECT, CREATE, UPDATE and DELETE unless some other permissions were specified via the PERMISSIONS clause.

We have decided to treat this behaviour as a vulnerability due to its security implications, especially considering the lack of specific documentation and potential for confusion due to the INFO FOR DB statement previously not displaying default permissions. Treating it as a bug fix provides justification for a change in default behavior outside of a major release.

Impact

Any client authorized to query data in a SurrealDB instance will have full access to any tables that were defined with no explicit permissions and that are within its authorization scope (i.e. namespace or database), including creating, reading, updating and deleting data. This is specially relevant for SurrealDB instances allowing guest access with publicly exposed interfaces (e.g. HTTP REST API or WebSocket API), since a remote unauthenticated user may gain full access to any tables that were defined without any explicit permissions. Tables that were defined with explicit permissions using the PERMISSIONS clause are not affected.

Patches

Version 1.0.1 includes a patch for this specific issue. Later releases will also include the patch.
Version 1.1.0-beta.1 and latest nightly releases already include the patch for this issue.

In patched versions:

Tables defined after the patch without explicit permissions have NONE permissions.
Table permissions are always explicitly displayed with the INFO FOR DB statement.

Workarounds

In unpatched versions, this issue can be resolved by explicitly defining table permissions as shown in the following examples:

-- INSECURE EXAMPLE
-- DEFINE TABLE insecure;
-- SECURE EXAMPLE 1
DEFINE TABLE secure PERMISSIONS NONE;
-- SECURE EXAMPLE 2
DEFINE TABLE secure PERMISSIONS FOR SELECT, CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE NONE;
-- SECURE EXAMPLE 3
DEFINE TABLE secure PERMISSIONS FOR
  SELECT WHERE user = $auth.id,
  CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE NONE;
-- SECURE EXAMPLE 4
DEFINE TABLE secure PERMISSIONS
  FOR select WHERE published = true OR user = $auth.id
  FOR create, update WHERE user = $auth.id
  FOR delete WHERE user = $auth.id OR $auth.admin = true;

References

https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/pull/3074
https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/pull/3083
https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/pull/3125
https://docs.surrealdb.com/docs/surrealql/statements/define/table/
https://docs.surrealdb.com/docs/security/capabilities#guest-access

Published: Dec 15, 2023
Updated: Dec 16, 2023
GHSA: GHSA-x5fr-7hhj-34j3
Severity: High
Exploit:
CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

Severity: High
Score: 8.8
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

No CWE or OWASP classifications available.

Affected Software
References

Software	From	Fixed in
surrealdb	-	1.0.1

https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/security/advisories/GHSA-x5fr-7hhj-34j3

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.