Mass Assignment in AdonisJS Lucid Allows Overwriting Internal ORM State

Summary

Description A Mass Assignment (CWE-915) vulnerability in AdonisJS Lucid may allow a remote attacker who can influence data that is passed into Lucid model assignments to overwrite the internal ORM state. This may lead to logic bypasses and unauthorized record modification within a table or model. This affects @adonisjs/lucid through version 21.8.1 and 22.x pre-release versions prior to 22.0.0-next.6. This has been patched in @adonisjs/lucid versions 21.8.2 and 22.0.0-next.6.

Details

A vulnerability in the BaseModelImpl class of @adonisjs/lucid may allow an attacker to overwrite internal class properties (such as $isPersisted, $attributes, or $isDeleted) when passing plain objects to model assignment methods.

The library relies on a this.hasOwnProperty(key) check to validate assignment targets. However, because internal ORM state properties are initialized as instance properties, they pass this check. Consequently, if an attacker can influence specific keys (like $isPersisted) into the payload passed to merge() or $consumeAdapterResult(), they can hijack the ORM's internal logic.

The exposed internal properties include:

• $attributes: The raw storage for model data.
• $isPersisted: Controls whether save() performs an INSERT or an UPDATE.
• $original: Stores the original state of the record used to calculate changes.
• $isDeleted: Prevents operations on deleted models.

This issue propagates to the entire write surface of the library, including:

• Instance methods fill and merge.
• Single record creation methods create, createQuietly, firstOrNew, and firstOrCreate.
• Conditional updates via updateOrCreate.
• Bulk operations createMany, createManyQuietly, fetchOrNewUpMany, fetchOrCreateMany, and updateOrCreateMany.

Impact

Applications are vulnerable if they pass unvalidated data or validated data that retains unknown properties to the model. This occurs because internal keys exist as instance properties, causing them to pass the hasOwnProperty check and bypass Lucid's default rejection of unknown properties.

Applications utilizing strict allow lists for input validation that discard unknown properties are not affected.

For example, if a developer passes request.all(), request.except() or a schema with allowUnknownProperties to Model.create(), the ORM's internal logic can be hijacked. Because the Model.create() > save() decision is based on $isPersisted, and merge() can assign to the own-property $isPersisted, an attacker who can inject "$isPersisted": true into the payload can force save() to take the UPDATE branch rather than the INSERT branch, while setting $attributes can bypass validators or field restrictions.

Patches

This issue has been patched in @adonisjs/lucid version 21.8.2 and 22.0.0-next.6. Please upgrade to this version or later.

Developers can mitigate this issue by strictly validating model inputs with an allow list that drops unknown keys if possible.