Advisory details
Finding — Unauthorized Workspace Variables disclosure via $vars injection (bypasses variables:view)
What’s wrong (code locations)
- Variables for the active workspace are fetched without checking “variables:view” at this call site: flowise-src/
packages/components/src/utils.ts:932
- Runtime variables are resolved from server environment variables: flowise-src/packages/components/src/utils.ts:976
- $vars is always injected into the code execution sandbox: flowise-src/packages/components/src/utils.ts:1782
- The official Variables API is permission-protected (contrast): flowise-src/packages/server/src/routes/variables/
index.ts:11
Why it is a privilege boundary bypass
A user/API key might be denied variables:view (and the /api/v1/variables route enforces it), but they can still:
- call /api/v1/node-custom-function (Finding 1)
- and have $vars pre-populated with all variables for the workspace, including runtime values from process.env
What data is exposed
Inside the custom JS context, $vars contains a flat map of:
- Variable.name -> Variable.value for static variables, and
- Variable.name -> process.env[Variable.name] for runtime variables (type === 'runtime')
This can expose secrets such as database passwords, JWT secrets, SMTP passwords, cloud keys, etc., depending on what
the workspace Variables are configured to map.
Recommended fix (minimum)
- Do not inject $vars unless the caller is authorized:
- enforce variables:view before injecting $vars, or
- inject only an explicit allowlist of variables needed for the function
- Consider disabling or heavily restricting type=runtime variables in self-hosted environments (or restrict which env
keys may be mapped).