Cache poisoning via maliciously-formed request in Discourse

Discourse is the an open source discussion platform. In affected versions a maliciously crafted request for static assets could cause error responses to be cached by Discourse's default NGINX proxy configuration. A corrected NGINX configuration is included in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Email activation route can be abused by spammers in Discourse

Discourse is the an open source discussion platform. In affected versions an email activation route can be abused to send mass spam emails. A fix has been included in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse which rate limits emails. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should manually rate limit email.

Discourse-Chat Cross-Site Scripting issue for channel names and descriptions

Discourse-Chat is an asynchronous messaging plugin for the Discourse open-source discussion platform. Users of Discourse Chat can be affected by admin users inserting HTML into chat titles and descriptions, causing a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack. Version 0.9 contains a patch for this issue.

Discourse vulnerable to RCE via admins uploading maliciously zipped file

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 2.8.9 on the `stable` branch and prior to 2.9.0.beta10 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, admins can upload a maliciously crafted Zip or Gzip Tar archive to write files at arbitrary locations and trigger remote code execution. The problem is patched in version 2.8.9 on the `stable` branch and version 2.9.0.beta10 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches. There are no known workarounds.

Discourse moderators can edit themes via the API

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 2.8.9 on the `stable` branch and prior to 2.9.0.beta10 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, a moderator can create new and edit existing themes by using the API when they should not be able to do so. The problem is patched in version 2.8.9 on the `stable` branch and version 2.9.0.beta10 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches. There are no known workarounds.

Discourse user profile location and website fields were not sufficiently length-limited

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 2.8.9 on the `stable` branch and prior to 2.9.0.beta10 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, a malicious actor can add large payloads of text into the Location and Website fields of a user profile, which causes issues for other users when loading that profile. A fix to limit the length of user input for these fields is included in version 2.8.9 on the `stable` branch and version 2.9.0.beta10 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches. There are no known workarounds.

Discourse vulnerable to incomplete quote causing a topic to crash in the browser

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Starting with version 2.9.0.beta5 and prior to version 2.9.0.beta10, an incomplete quote can generate a JavaScript error which will crash the current page in the browser in some cases. Version 2.9.0.beta10 added a fix and tests to ensure incomplete quotes won't break the app. As a workaround, the quote can be fixed via the rails console.

Discourse-chat plugin susceptible to XSS in channel name and description

discourse-chat is a plugin for the Discourse message board which adds chat functionality. In versions prior to 0.9 some places render a chat channel's name and description in an unsafe way, allowing staff members to cause an cross site scripting (XSS) attack by inserting unsafe HTML into them. Version 0.9 has addressed this issue. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.

Discourse user account takeover via email and invite link

Discourse is a platform for community discussion. Users who receive an invitation link that is not scoped to a single email address can enter any non-admin user's email and gain access to their account when accepting the invitation. All users should upgrade to the latest version. A workaround is temporarily disabling invitations with `SiteSetting.max_invites_per_day = 0` or scope them to individual email addresses.

Displaying user badges can leak topic titles to users that have no access to the topic

Discourse is a platform for community discussion. Under certain conditions, a user badge may have been awarded based on a user's activity in a topic with restricted access. Before this vulnerability was disclosed, the topic title of the topic associated with the user badge may be viewed by any user. If there are sensitive information in the topic title, it will therefore have been exposed. This issue is patched in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse. There are currently no known workarounds available.

Users erroneously and transparently added to private messages in Discourse

Discourse is the an open source discussion platform. In some rare cases users redeeming an invitation can be added as a participant to several private message topics that they should not be added to. They are not notified of this, it happens transparently in the background. This issue has been resolved in commit `a414520742` and will be included in future releases. Users are advised to upgrade. Users are also advised to set `SiteSetting.max_invites_per_day` to 0 until the patch is installed.

Discourse chat messages should have a maximum character limit

Discourse is an open-source discussion platform. Prior to version 2.9.0.beta13, users can post chat messages of an unlimited length, which can cause a denial of service for other users when posting huge amounts of text. Users should upgrade to version 2.9.0.beta13, where a limit has been introduced. No known workarounds are available.

Discourse users can see notifications for topics they no longer have access to

Discourse is an open-source discussion platform. In stable versions prior to 2.8.12 and beta or tests-passed versions prior to 2.9.0.beta.13, under certain conditions, a user can see notifications for topics they no longer have access to. If there is sensitive information in the topic title, it will therefore have been exposed. This issue is patched in stable version 2.8.12, beta version 2.9.0.beta13, and tests-passed version 2.9.0.beta13. There are no workarounds available.

Discourse allows self-XSS through malicious composer message

Discourse is an open-source messaging platform. In versions 2.8.10 and prior on the `stable` branch and versions 2.9.0.beta11 and prior on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, users composing malicious messages and navigating to drafts page could self-XSS. This vulnerability can lead to a full XSS on sites which have modified or disabled Discourse’s default Content Security Policy. This issue is patched in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse.

Discourse may allow exposure of hidden tags in the subject of notification emails

Discourse is an open-source discussion platform. Prior to version 2.8.13 of the `stable` branch and version 2.9.0.beta14 of the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, unauthorized users may learn of the existence of hidden tags and that they have been applied to topics that they have access to. This issue is patched in version 2.8.13 of the `stable` branch and version 2.9.0.beta14 of the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches. As a workaround, use the `disable_email` site setting to disable all emails to non-staff users.

Any authenticated Discourse user can create an unlisted topic

Discourse is an open-source discussion platform. In version 2.8.13 and prior on the `stable` branch and version 2.9.0.beta14 and prior on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, any authenticated user can create an unlisted topic. These topics, which are not readily available to other users, can take up unnecessary site resources. A patch for this issue is available in the `main` branch of Discourse. There are no known workarounds available.

Discourse BBCode plugin vulnerable to arbitrary CSS injection

discourse-bbcode is the official BBCode plugin for Discourse. Prior to commit 91478f5, CSS injection can occur when rendering content generated with the discourse-bccode plugin. This vulnerability only affects sites which have the discourse-bbcode plugin installed and enabled. This issue is patched in commit 91478f5. As a workaround, ensure that the Content Security Policy is enabled and monitor any posts that contain bbcode.

Disclosure of the existence of secret subcategories in Discourse

Discourse is an open source platform for community discussion. In affected versions an attacker can learn that a secret subcategory exists under a public category which has no public subcategories. The issue is patched in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed version of Discourse. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Discourse is an option source discussion platform. Prior to version 2.8.14 on the `stable` branch and version 2.9.0.beta16 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, parsing posts can be susceptible to regular expression denial of service (ReDoS) attacks. This issue is patched in versions 2.8.14 and 2.9.0.beta16. There are no known workarounds.

Discourse vulnerable to bypass of post max_length using HTML comments

Discourse is an option source discussion platform. Prior to version 2.8.14 on the `stable` branch and version 2.9.0.beta16 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, users can create posts with raw body longer than the `max_length` site setting by including html comments that are not counted toward the character limit. This issue is patched in versions 2.8.14 and 2.9.0.beta16. There are no known workarounds.