CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-41082 — Discourse is a platform for community discussion

High CVSS 7.5

Discourse is a platform for community discussion. In affected versions any private message that includes a group had its title and participating user exposed to users that do not have access to the private messages. However, access control for the private messages was not compromised as users were not able to view the posts in the leaked private message despite seeing it in their inbox. The problematic commit was reverted around 32 minutes after it was made. Users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest commit if they are running Discourse against the `tests-passed` branch.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.1)
Published
2021-09-20
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-200, CWE-863

Affected products

  • discourse / discourse

Matched remediation archetype

Authorization bypass, IDOR, and cross-tenant access

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map object and action authorization checks across API, UI, batch, import/export, and background-job paths.
  • Identify tenant, ownership, role, and policy boundaries for affected resources and administrative operations.
  • Use synthetic fixtures to compare intended access matrices without accessing another user's real data.

Remediate safely

  • Enforce server-side authorization at each resource access and state transition using the authenticated principal and trusted tenant context.
  • Scope data queries by tenant and ownership; treat client-supplied identifiers, roles, and policy claims as untrusted.
  • Add deny-by-default policy tests for horizontal and vertical access across every affected transport.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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