NodeBB vulnerabilities

NodeBB does not bind the claimed author of an inbound ActivityPub object to the authenticated remote actor. The inbound middleware verifies the HTTP-signature actor and checks the origin of object.id, but never validates that attributedTo corresponds to the sender. In the object mock, attributedTo is used directly as a uid, and actors.assert silently ignores numeric identifiers (filtering them out without re-deriving the uid), so a federated remote actor can set attributedTo to a bare numeric value such as 1 and have the resulting post or private message created with that local uid as author, including the administrator account. This lets a remote attacker forge posts and direct messages attributed to arbitrary local users. Requires the ActivityPub/federation feature to be enabled.

NodeBB Plugin Emoji 3.2.1 contains an arbitrary file write vulnerability that allows administrative users to write files to arbitrary system locations through the emoji upload API. Attackers with admin access can craft file upload requests with directory traversal to overwrite system files by manipulating the file path parameter.