Information disclosure in Discourse

CVE-2024-53991

Discourse is an open source platform for community discussion. This vulnerability only impacts Discourse instances configured to use `FileStore::LocalStore` which means uploads and backups are stored locally on disk. If an attacker knows the name of the Discourse backup file, the attacker can trick nginx into sending the Discourse backup file with a well crafted request. This issue is patched in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade can either 1. Download all local backups on to another storage device, disable the `enable_backups` site setting and delete all backups until the site has been upgraded to pull in the fix. Or 2. Change the `backup_location` site setting to `s3` so that backups are stored and downloaded directly from S3.

Vulnerability class: Information Disclosure

EPSS: 0.254 (97.7th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N.

Affected products

  • Discourse — versions beta: <= 3.4.0.beta3, 3.4.0, stable: <= 3.3.2

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2024-53991?
CVE-2024-53991 is a high-severity vulnerability in Discourse, classified under Information Disclosure. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2024-12-19.
How severe is CVE-2024-53991?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2024-53991 known to be exploited?
1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.