published September 1, 2026
Not Failing Securely (Failing Open) vulnerability in ash-project ash skips an Ash.Reactor change when the guard controlling it raises, so a change meant to run does not.
An Ash.Reactor change step can be gated by where validations that decide whether the change runs. Ash.Reactor.ChangeStep (lib/ash/reactor/steps/change_step.ex) evaluated those guards in apply_where_clauses/3, and apply_validation rescued any exception into {:error, error}. The reduce treated that identically to a guard whose condition was simply not met and bypassed the change. So when a guard raises (for example on attacker-influenced input), a change that enforces a security-relevant modification is skipped rather than failing the step. The fix distinguishes a raised exception (now {:raised, error}) and halts the step with an error, failing closed.
This issue affects ash: from 3.0.0-rc.17 before 3.32.2.