Resource exhaustion in Discourse

CVE-2025-68659

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.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 4.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (14.6th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 15th percentile — 14.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2025-68659: held from 0.002 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • Discourse — versions >= 2026.1.0-latest, < 2026.1.0, >= 2025.12.0-latest, < 2025.12.1, < 3.5.4

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-68659?
CVE-2025-68659 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Discourse, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 4.3/10. Published 2026-01-28.
How severe is CVE-2025-68659?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.3 out of 10.