Discourse vulnerabilities

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, moderators can convert some personal messages to public topics when they shouldn't have access. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. As a workaround, site admin can temporarily revoke the moderation role from untrusted moderators or remove the moderator group from the "personal message enabled groups" site setting until the Discourse instance has been upgraded to a version that has been patched.

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.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, moderators can access the `top_uploads` admin report which should be restricted to admins only. This report displays direct URLs to all uploaded files on the site, including sensitive content such as user data exports, admin backups, and other private attachments that moderators should not have access to. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. There is no workaround. Limit moderator privileges to trusted users until the patch is applied.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, authenticated users can submit crafted payloads to /drafts.json that cause O(n^2) processing in Base62.decode, tying up workers for 35-60 seconds per request. This affects all users as the shared worker pool becomes exhausted. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. Lowering the max_draft_length site setting reduces attack surface but does not fully mitigate the issue, as payloads under the limit can still trigger the slow code path.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, non-admin moderators with the `moderators_change_post_ownership` setting enabled can change ownership of posts in private messages and restricted categories they cannot access, then export their data to view the content. This is a broken access control vulnerability affecting sites that grant moderators post ownership transfer permissions. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. The patch adds visibility checks for both the topic and posts before allowing ownership transfer. As a workaround, disable the `moderators_change_post_ownership` site setting to prevent non-admin moderators from using the post ownership transfer feature.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, users archives are viewable by users with moderation privileges even though moderators should not have access to the archives. Private topic/post content made by the users are leaked through the archives leading to a breach of confidentiality. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. To work around this problem, a site admin can temporarily revoke the moderation role from all moderators until the Discourse instance has been upgraded to a version that has been patched.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, an endpoint lets any authenticated user bypass the ai_discover_persona access controls and gain ongoing DM access to personas that may be wired to staff-only categories, RAG document sets, or automated tooling, enabling unauthorized data disclosure. Because the controller also accepts arbitrary user_id, an attacker can impersonate other accounts to trigger unwanted AI conversations on their behalf, generating confusing or abusive PM traffic. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. No known workarounds are available.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0 have an application level denial of service vulnerabilityin the username change functionality at try.discourse.org. The vulnerability allows attackers to cause noticeable server delays and resource exhaustion by sending large JSON payloads to the username preference endpoint PUT /u//preferences/username, resulting in degraded performance for other users and endpoints. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. No known workarounds are available.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, some subscription endpoints lack proper checking for ownership before making changes. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. No known workarounds are available.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0 have a content-security-policy-mitigated cross-site scriptinv vulnerability on the Discourse Math plugin when using its KaTeX variant. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. As a workaround, the Discourse Math plugin can be disabled, or the Mathjax provider can be used instead of KaTeX.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. A vulnerability present in versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0 affects anyone who uses S3 for uploads. While scripts may be executed, they will only be run in the context of the S3/CDN domain, with no site credentials. Versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0 fix the issue. As a workaround, disallow html or xml files for uploads in authorized_extensions. For existing html xml uploads, site owners can consider deleting them.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Prior to versions 3.5.3, 2025.11.1, and 2025.12.0, an attacker who knows part of a username can find the user and their full name via UI or API, even when `enable_names` is disabled. Versions 3.5.3, 2025.11.1, and 2025.12.0 contain a fix.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Version before 3.6.2 and 3.6.0.beta2, default Cache-Control response header with value no-store, no-cache was missing from error responses. This may caused unintended caching of those responses by proxies potentially leading to cache poisoning attacks. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.6.2 and 3.6.0.beta2.