CVE-2023-40588 Discourse DoS via 2FA and Security Key Names

What is CVE-2023-40588?

CVE-2023-40588 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Discourse Discourse, published on 15 Sep 2023. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Discourse is an open-source discussion platform. Prior to version 3.1.1 of the `stable` branch and version 3.2.0.beta1 of the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, a malicious user could add a 2FA or security key with a carefully crafted name to their account and cause a denial of service for other users. The issue is patched in version 3.1.1 of the `stable` branch and version 3.2.0.beta1 of the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches. There are no known workarounds.

Weakness: CWE-770

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-40588?

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

Products include Discourse Discourse.

How do I fix CVE-2023-40588?

Upgrade discourse to 3.1.1 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-2023-40588 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-40588 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-2023-40588, GHSA-2hg5-3xm3-9vvx.