CVE-2025-69289 Privilege escalation in discourse

What is CVE-2025-69289?

CVE-2025-69289 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Discourse Discourse, published on 28 Jan 2026. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. A privilege escalation vulnerability in versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0 allows a non-admin moderator to bypass email-change restrictions, allowing a takeover of non-staff accounts. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. As a workaround, ensure moderators are trusted or enable the "require_change_email_confirmation" setting.

Weakness: CWE-863

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-69289?

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

Products include Discourse Discourse.

How do I fix CVE-2025-69289?

Upgrade discourse to a fixed version for your release line: 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1 or 2026.1.0.

Is CVE-2025-69289 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-69289 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-2025-69289, GHSA-p39j-x54c-rwqq.