First published: Thu Dec 19 2024(Updated: )
Discourse is an open source platform for community discussion. This vulnerability only impacts Discourse instances configured to use `FileStore::LocalStore` which means uploads and backups are stored locally on disk. If an attacker knows the name of the Discourse backup file, the attacker can trick nginx into sending the Discourse backup file with a well crafted request. This issue is patched in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade can either 1. Download all local backups on to another storage device, disable the `enable_backups` site setting and delete all backups until the site has been upgraded to pull in the fix. Or 2. Change the `backup_location` site setting to `s3` so that backups are stored and downloaded directly from S3.
Credit: security-advisories@github.com
Affected Software | Affected Version | How to fix |
---|---|---|
Discourse | <latest stable, beta and tests-passed |
Sign up to SecAlerts for real-time vulnerability data matched to your software, aggregated from hundreds of sources.
CVE-2024-53991 has been rated as a moderate severity vulnerability that can lead to sensitive data exposure.
To fix CVE-2024-53991, reconfigure your Discourse instance to use an alternative storage backend instead of FileStore::LocalStore.
CVE-2024-53991 affects all versions of Discourse configured to use FileStore::LocalStore on stable, beta, and tests-passed versions.
Systems that utilize Discourse with local disk storage for uploads and backups are vulnerable to CVE-2024-53991.
The potential impacts of CVE-2024-53991 include unauthorized access to backup files which may contain sensitive data.