Package Instance

Apollo Gateway Query Planner Vulnerable to Excessive Resource Consumption via Named Fragment Expansion
# Impact

## Summary

A vulnerability in Apollo Gateway allowed queries with deeply nested and reused named fragments to be prohibitively expensive to query plan, specifically during named fragment expansion. This could lead to excessive resource consumption and denial of service.

## Details

Named fragments were being expanded once per fragment spread during query planning, leading to exponential resource usage when deeply nested and reused fragments were involved.

## Fix/Mitigation

A new **Query Fragment Expansion Limit** metric has been introduced:
  - This metric computes the number of selections a query would have if its fragment spreads were fully expanded.
  - The metric is checked against a limit to prevent excessive computation.

# Patches

This has been remediated in `@apollo/gateway` version 2.10.1.

# Workarounds

No known direct workarounds exist.

# References

[Query Planning Documentation](https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphos/reference/federation/query-plans)

## Acknowledgements

We appreciate the efforts of the security community in identifying and improving the performance and security of query planning mechanisms.

Prototype Pollution in @apollo/gateway
Versions of `@apollo/gateway` prior to 0.6.2 are vulnerable to Prototype Pollution. The package uses deepMerge() to merge objects, which may allow attackers to alter the Object prototype through queries with GraphQL aliases. Carefully constructed payloads can override properties of all objects in the application. This may lead to Denial of Service or may be chained with other vulnerabilities leading to Remote Code Execution.


## Recommendation

Upgrade to version 0.6.2 or later.

Apollo Gateway Query Planner Vulnerable to Excessive Resource Consumption via Optimization Bypass
# Impact

## Summary

A vulnerability in Apollo Gateway allowed queries with deeply nested and reused named fragments to be prohibitively expensive to query plan, specifically due to internal optimizations being frequently bypassed. This could lead to excessive resource consumption and denial of service.

## Details

The query planner includes an optimization that significantly speeds up planning for applicable GraphQL selections. However, queries with deeply nested and reused named fragments can generate many selections where this optimization does not apply, leading to significantly longer planning times. Because the query planner does not enforce a timeout, a small number of such queries can render gateway inoperable.

## Fix/Mitigation

- A new **Query Optimization Limit** metric has been added:
  - This metric approximates the number of selections that cannot be skipped by the existing optimization.
  - The metric is checked against a limit to prevent excessive computation.

Given the complexity of query planning optimizations, we will continue refining these solutions based on real-world performance and accuracy tests.

# Patches

This has been remediated in `@apollo/gateway` version 2.10.1.

# Workarounds

No known direct workarounds exist.

# References

[Query Planning Documentation](https://www.apollographql.com/docs/graphos/reference/federation/query-plans)

## Acknowledgements

We appreciate the efforts of the security community in identifying and improving the performance and security of query planning mechanisms.