CVE-2023-23615 Malicious users in Discourse can create spam topics as any user due to improper access control

What is CVE-2023-23615?

CVE-2023-23615 is a medium-severity missing authorization vulnerability in Discourse Discourse, published on 3 Feb 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. The embeddable comments can be exploited to create new topics as any user but without any clear title or content. This issue is patched in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse. As a workaround, disable embeddable comments by deleting all embeddable hosts.

Weakness: CWE-284

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-23615?

1 open source package ship an affected version, including discourse. It affects 1 product.

Products include Discourse Discourse.

How do I fix CVE-2023-23615?

Upgrade discourse to 3.0.1 or later.

Upgrade, and check permissions on every request on the server, not only in the interface. More about Missing authorization.

Is CVE-2023-23615 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-23615 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Discourse Discourse

• CVE-2021-41163 RCE via malicious SNS subscription payload Critical 10.0
• CVE-2022-36066 Discourse vulnerable to RCE via admins uploading maliciously zipped file Critical 9.1
• CVE-2022-39356 Discourse user account takeover via email and invite link High 8.9
• CVE-2023-22468 Discourse vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting in local oneboxes High 8.8
• CVE-2026-27934 Discourse leaks private topic title and post excerpt via user action API endpoint High 8.7

All Discourse Discourse vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BIT-discourse-2023-23615, GHSA-7mf3-5v84-wxq8.