Discourse non-admin moderators can exfiltrate private content via post ownership transfer
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, 2026.1.0
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: none
- Automatable: no
- Technical impact: partial
Summary
Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, non-admin moderators with the `moderators_change_post_ownership` setting enabled can change ownership of posts in private messages and restricted categories they cannot access, then export their data to view the content. This is a broken access control vulnerability affecting sites that grant moderators post ownership transfer permissions. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. The patch adds visibility checks for both the topic and posts before allowing ownership transfer. As a workaround, disable the `moderators_change_post_ownership` site setting to prevent non-admin moderators from using the post ownership transfer feature.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- discourse discourse
fixed in 3.5.4; From 2025.11.0-latest · fixed in 2025.11.2; From 2025.12.0-latest · fixed in 2025.12.1; From 2026.1.0-latest · fixed in 2026.1.0