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Milvus Proxy has a Critical Authentication Bypass Vulnerability

Critical severity GitHub Reviewed Published Nov 10, 2025 in milvus-io/milvus • Updated Nov 13, 2025

Package

gomod github.com/milvus-io/milvus (Go)

Affected versions

>= 0.10.4, < 2.4.24
>= 2.5.0, < 2.5.21
>= 2.6.0, < 2.6.5
< 0.10.3-0.20251107071934-6102f001a971

Patched versions

2.4.24
2.5.21
2.6.5
0.10.3-0.20251107071934-6102f001a971

Description

Impact

What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?
An unauthenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability to bypass all authentication mechanisms in the Milvus Proxy component, gaining full administrative access to the Milvus cluster.
This grants the attacker the ability to read, modify, or delete data, and to perform privileged administrative operations such as database or collection management.
All users running affected Milvus versions are strongly advised to upgrade immediately.

Patches

Has the problem been patched? What versions should users upgrade to?
This issue has been fixed in the following versions:
• Milvus 2.4.24
• Milvus 2.5.21
• Milvus 2.6.5

Users should upgrade to these patched versions or later to mitigate the vulnerability.

Workarounds

Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?
If immediate upgrade is not possible, a temporary mitigation can be applied by removing the sourceID header from all incoming requests at the gateway, API gateway, or load balancer level before they reach the Milvus Proxy.
This prevents attackers from exploiting the authentication bypass behavior.

References

Are there any links users can visit to find out more?

The following pull requests contain the fixes for the affected Milvus branches:
• Fix for 2.4 branch
• Fix for 2.5 branch
• Fix for 2.6 branch

Special thanks to the Volcengine Milvus team at ByteDance([email protected]) for responsibly discovering, reporting, and coordinating the disclosure of this critical authentication bypass vulnerability with the Milvus maintainers.

References

@LoveEachDay LoveEachDay published to milvus-io/milvus Nov 10, 2025
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Nov 10, 2025
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Nov 13, 2025
Reviewed Nov 13, 2025
Last updated Nov 13, 2025

Severity

Critical

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v4 base metrics

Exploitability Metrics
Attack Vector Network
Attack Complexity Low
Attack Requirements None
Privileges Required None
User interaction None
Vulnerable System Impact Metrics
Confidentiality High
Integrity High
Availability High
Subsequent System Impact Metrics
Confidentiality None
Integrity None
Availability None

CVSS v4 base metrics

Exploitability Metrics
Attack Vector: This metric reflects the context by which vulnerability exploitation is possible. This metric value (and consequently the resulting severity) will be larger the more remote (logically, and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerable system. The assumption is that the number of potential attackers for a vulnerability that could be exploited from across a network is larger than the number of potential attackers that could exploit a vulnerability requiring physical access to a device, and therefore warrants a greater severity.
Attack Complexity: This metric captures measurable actions that must be taken by the attacker to actively evade or circumvent existing built-in security-enhancing conditions in order to obtain a working exploit. These are conditions whose primary purpose is to increase security and/or increase exploit engineering complexity. A vulnerability exploitable without a target-specific variable has a lower complexity than a vulnerability that would require non-trivial customization. This metric is meant to capture security mechanisms utilized by the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: This metric captures the prerequisite deployment and execution conditions or variables of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These differ from security-enhancing techniques/technologies (ref Attack Complexity) as the primary purpose of these conditions is not to explicitly mitigate attacks, but rather, emerge naturally as a consequence of the deployment and execution of the vulnerable system.
Privileges Required: This metric describes the level of privileges an attacker must possess prior to successfully exploiting the vulnerability. The method by which the attacker obtains privileged credentials prior to the attack (e.g., free trial accounts), is outside the scope of this metric. Generally, self-service provisioned accounts do not constitute a privilege requirement if the attacker can grant themselves privileges as part of the attack.
User interaction: This metric captures the requirement for a human user, other than the attacker, to participate in the successful compromise of the vulnerable system. This metric determines whether the vulnerability can be exploited solely at the will of the attacker, or whether a separate user (or user-initiated process) must participate in some manner.
Vulnerable System Impact Metrics
Confidentiality: This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information managed by the VULNERABLE SYSTEM due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting information access and disclosure to only authorized users, as well as preventing access by, or disclosure to, unauthorized ones.
Integrity: This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information. Integrity of the VULNERABLE SYSTEM is impacted when an attacker makes unauthorized modification of system data. Integrity is also impacted when a system user can repudiate critical actions taken in the context of the system (e.g. due to insufficient logging).
Availability: This metric measures the impact to the availability of the VULNERABLE SYSTEM resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. While the Confidentiality and Integrity impact metrics apply to the loss of confidentiality or integrity of data (e.g., information, files) used by the system, this metric refers to the loss of availability of the impacted system itself, such as a networked service (e.g., web, database, email). Since availability refers to the accessibility of information resources, attacks that consume network bandwidth, processor cycles, or disk space all impact the availability of a system.
Subsequent System Impact Metrics
Confidentiality: This metric measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information managed by the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting information access and disclosure to only authorized users, as well as preventing access by, or disclosure to, unauthorized ones.
Integrity: This metric measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of information. Integrity of the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM is impacted when an attacker makes unauthorized modification of system data. Integrity is also impacted when a system user can repudiate critical actions taken in the context of the system (e.g. due to insufficient logging).
Availability: This metric measures the impact to the availability of the SUBSEQUENT SYSTEM resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. While the Confidentiality and Integrity impact metrics apply to the loss of confidentiality or integrity of data (e.g., information, files) used by the system, this metric refers to the loss of availability of the impacted system itself, such as a networked service (e.g., web, database, email). Since availability refers to the accessibility of information resources, attacks that consume network bandwidth, processor cycles, or disk space all impact the availability of a system.
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

EPSS score

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

This score estimates the probability of this vulnerability being exploited within the next 30 days. Data provided by FIRST.
(46th percentile)

Weaknesses

Improper Authentication

When an actor claims to have a given identity, the product does not prove or insufficiently proves that the claim is correct. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2025-64513

GHSA ID

GHSA-mhjq-8c7m-3f7p

Source code

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