CVE-2022-21684mediumCWE-287

CVE-2022-21684: medium-severity vulnerability in discourse

User can bypass approval when invited to Discourse

Published · Updated

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13Vexday Risk Score

No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.

ssvc Trackcvss 4.3epss 0.9%
In short

A user invited by email to a Discourse forum with user approval enabled can automatically log in without being approved first, temporarily gaining full access. Once they log out, they cannot log back in until properly approved.

Technical detail

Authentication bypass in Discourse versions prior to 2.7.13 where invited users via email are automatically logged in despite the `must_approve_users` setting being enabled. The vulnerability allows unapproved users to access authenticated functionality until session logout. Requires email invitation mechanism to be enabled and the forum to have mandatory user approval configured.

Summary generated and translated by AI from the official description.
Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Versions prior to 2.7.13 in `stable`, 2.8.0.beta11 in `beta`, and 2.8.0.beta11 in `tests-passed` allow some users to log in to a community before they should be able to do so. A user invited via email to a forum with `must_approve_users` enabled is going to be automatically logged in, bypassing the check that does not allow unapproved users to sign in. They will be able to do everything an approved user can do. If they logout, they cannot log back in. This issue is patched in the `stable` version 2.7.13, `beta` version 2.8.0.beta11, and `tests-passed` version 2.8.0.beta11. One may disable invites as a workaround. Administrators can increase `min_trust_level_to_allow_invite` to reduce the attack surface to more trusted users.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
Affected products
discourse · discourse
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