Broken Access Control in Strapi with Cockroachdb

Broken Access Control occurs when API endpoints fail to enforce authorization checks correctly, allowing one user to access or modify another user’s resources. In a Strapi application backed by Cockroachdb, this risk is shaped by how permissions are defined in Strapi and how data is modeled and queried across a distributed SQL layer.

Strapi’s role-based access control (RBAC) lets you define policies per content type and per action. If these policies are misconfigured—such as granting broader permissions than intended or omitting ownership checks—users can escalate privileges horizontally or vertically. Cockroachdb’s distributed SQL nature does not introduce new access control flaws by itself, but it changes how you reason about data isolation. Because Cockroachdb supports multi-region deployments and secondary indexes, queries that assume single-region locality can inadvertently expose records when joins or filters are not scoped to the requesting user’s tenant or organization.

A concrete example: suppose you have a articles collection type in Strapi with a user relation, and you rely on a published find policy that omits a userId filter. If the policy is attached to a role assigned broadly (e.g., authenticated users), any authenticated user can potentially list or retrieve articles they do not own. Cockroachdb will execute the query as written, and because it enforces ACID semantics across nodes, the result set will be consistent but incorrect from a security perspective. Additionally, if your permissions rely on custom beforeQuery lifecycle callbacks, ensure they correctly scope by tenant or owner; missing scoping effectively turns a logical ownership model into a broken access control boundary.

Another vector involves relationship traversal. Strapi’s GraphQL and REST APIs can expose relational fields that, when queried without proper constraints, return linked records a user should not see. With Cockroachdb, referential integrity is enforced, but authorization is not automatic. If you expose an endpoint like /articles?populate=author without verifying that the authenticated user is the author or a permitted viewer, you leak PII and enable IDOR. The database faithfully returns what the query requests; the flaw is in the application-level policy, not the storage engine, but Cockroachdb’s strong consistency means the leaked data is up-to-date and complete.

Operational practices around schema changes can also introduce regressions. Cockroachdb’s migrations are powerful, but if Strapi permissions are updated without corresponding database-level constraints (for example, missing row-level security when using advanced Cockroachdb features), an API update might unintentionally widen the attack surface. Regular audits of both Strapi role permissions and Cockroachdb query patterns are essential to ensure data access is bounded by the principle of least privilege.

Remediation focuses on ensuring every data access in Strapi is scoped to the requesting user and validated server-side. Below are concrete patterns and Cockroachdb-compatible code examples.

• Scope queries to the authenticated user in Strapi controllers. Instead of relying on global policies, inject the user identifier and filter at the query level:

// src/api/article/controllers/article.js
'use strict';

module.exports = {
  async find(ctx) {
    const user = ctx.state.user; // authenticated user from Strapi auth
    if (!user) {
      return ctx.unauthorized('Authentication required');
    }

    // Scope articles to the requesting user
    const articles = await strapi.db.query('api::article.article').findMany({
      where: { userId: user.id },
      populate: ['author'],
    });

    return articles;
  },
};

• Use Cockroachdb’s SELECT with explicit joins and filters to enforce ownership at the SQL level when using custom queries. This ensures even if Strapi’s query builder is misconfigured, the database enforces isolation:

-- Example raw query executed via Strapi’s database connection
SELECT a.id, a.title, a."createdAt", au.email AS author_email
FROM articles a
JOIN users au ON a."userId" = au.id
WHERE a."userId" = $1;

• Define a beforeQuery policy in Strapi to automatically scope content types by tenant or owner. This runs for every query and reduces the risk of missing filters:

// src/api/article/policies/scoped-access.js
module.exports = {
  async handler(ctx, next) {
    const user = ctx.state.user;
    if (user && ctx.query.where) {
      // Ensure every article query includes userId equality
      ctx.query.where.userId = user.id;
    }
    await next();
  },
};

• Validate ownership on update and delete actions. Never rely on frontend-supplied IDs alone. Re-fetch the record and confirm ownership before applying changes:

// src/api/article/controllers/article.js — update
module.exports = {
  async update(ctx) {
    const user = ctx.state.user;
    const { id } = ctx.params;

    const existing = await strapi.db.query('api::article.article').findOne({
      where: { id, userId: user.id },
    });

    if (!existing) {
      return ctx.notFound('Article not found or access denied');
    }

    const updated = await strapi.db.query('api::article.article').update({ where: { id }, data: ctx.request.body });
    return updated;
  },
};

• Audit and test permissions using the Strapi admin and API calls. Verify that different roles cannot bypass ownership checks. Complement this with Cockroachdb’s changefeeds or audit logging to monitor anomalous access patterns at scale.