CVE-2023-28440 Denial of service via admin theme import route in Discourse
A maliciously crafted request from an administrator can cause a long-running request and timeout, leading to denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-28440?
CVE-2023-28440 is a low-severity denial of service vulnerability in Discourse Discourse, published on 18 Apr 2023. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Discourse is an open source platform for community discussion. In affected versions a maliciously crafted request from a Discourse administrator can lead to a long-running request and eventual timeout. This has the greatest potential impact in shared hosting environments where admins are untrusted. This issue has been addressed in versions 3.0.3 and 3.1.0.beta4. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Weakness: CWE-400
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-28440?
1 open source package ship an affected version, including discourse. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
discourse Bitnami | All versions | 3.0.3 |
Products include Discourse Discourse.
How do I fix CVE-2023-28440?
Upgrade discourse to 3.0.3 or later.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2023-28440 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-28440 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Discourse Discourse
- CVE-2021-41163 RCE via malicious SNS subscription payload
- CVE-2022-36066 Discourse vulnerable to RCE via admins uploading maliciously zipped file
- CVE-2022-39356 Discourse user account takeover via email and invite link
- CVE-2023-22468 Discourse vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting in local oneboxes
- CVE-2026-27934 Discourse leaks private topic title and post excerpt via user action API endpoint
Sources
Also known as BIT-discourse-2023-28440, GHSA-vm65-pv5h-6g3w.