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.
CVSS Metrics
- Vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
- Attack Vector
- network
- Complexity
- low
- Privileges
- low
- User Action
- none
- Scope
- unchanged
- Confidentiality
- none
- Integrity
- low
- Availability
- none
- Weaknesses
- CWE-863CWE-639
Metadata
- Primary Vendor
- DISCOURSE
- Published
- 2/26/2026
- Last Modified
- 3/2/2026
- Source
- NIST NVD
- Note: Verify all details with official vendor sources before applying patches.
Affected Products
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