CVE-2025-64513

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.

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.

The application does not adequately verify the identity of a user, device, or process before granting access. Typical impact: unauthorized access to functions or data reserved for authenticated parties.

Kodem intelligence

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.

1. What is CVE-2025-64513? CVE-2025-64513 is a critical-severity improper authentication vulnerability in github.com/milvus-io/milvus (go), affecting versions >= 0.10.4, < 2.4.24. It is fixed in 2.4.24, 2.5.21, 2.6.5, 0.10.3-0.20251107071934-6102f001a971. The application does not adequately verify the identity of a user, device, or process before granting access.
2. Which versions of github.com/milvus-io/milvus are affected by CVE-2025-64513? github.com/milvus-io/milvus (go) versions >= 0.10.4, < 2.4.24 is affected.
3. Is there a fix for CVE-2025-64513? Yes. CVE-2025-64513 is fixed in 2.4.24, 2.5.21, 2.6.5, 0.10.3-0.20251107071934-6102f001a971. Upgrade to this version or later.
4. Is CVE-2025-64513 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2025-64513 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
5. What actually determines whether CVE-2025-64513 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
6. How do I fix CVE-2025-64513?
   • Upgrade github.com/milvus-io/milvus to 2.4.24 or later
   • Upgrade github.com/milvus-io/milvus to 2.5.21 or later
   • Upgrade github.com/milvus-io/milvus to 2.6.5 or later
   • Upgrade github.com/milvus-io/milvus to 0.10.3-0.20251107071934-6102f001a971 or later