CVE-2026-26973

Discourse doesn't scope reviewable notes to user-visible reviewables

State
Published
Severity
4.3 Medium
Published
Feb 26, 2026
Updated
Feb 26, 2026
Reserved
Feb 16, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Versions prior to 2025.12.2, 2026.1.1, and 2026.2.0 have an IDOR (Insecure Direct Object Reference) in `ReviewableNotesController`. When `enable_category_group_moderation` is enabled, a user belonging to a category moderation group can create or delete their own notes on **any** reviewable in the system, including reviewables in categories they do not moderate. The controller used an unscoped `Reviewable.find` and the `ensure_can_see` guard only checked whether the user could access the review queue in general, not whether they could access the specific reviewable. Only instances with `enable_category_group_moderation` enabled are affected. Staff users (admins/moderators) are not impacted as they already have access to all reviewables. The issue is patched in versions 2025.12.2, 2026.1.1, and 2026.2.0 by scoping the reviewable lookup through `Reviewable.viewable_by(current_user)`. As a workaround, disable the `enable_category_group_moderation` site setting. This removes the attack surface as only staff users will have access to the review queue.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.14.3 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:NGitHub_M

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
discoursediscourse
  • < 2025.12.2Affected
  • >= 2026.1.0-latest, < 2026.1.1Affected
  • >= 2026.2.0-latest, < 2026.2.0Affected

References

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