Service interruption via unbounded Onebox response parsing
Published Feb 15, 2022 · Updated Apr 23, 2025
Denial of service in Discourse stable through 2.8.0 and beta/tests-passed through 2.9.0.beta1 allows remote authenticated users to exhaust memory. The Onebox background parser follows a posted streaming URL and accepts its HTTP response without enforcing a time or size bound, allowing response buffering to continue indefinitely. A forum account able to create posts is required, and memory exhaustion can interrupt the Discourse service.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in Discourse stable through 2.8.0 and beta/tests-passed through 2.9.0.beta1 allows remote authenticated users to exhaust memory. The Onebox background parser follows a posted streaming URL and accepts its HTTP response without enforcing a time or size bound, allowing response buffering to continue indefinitely. A forum account able to create posts is required, and memory exhaustion can interrupt the Discourse service.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2022-23641
- Published
- Feb 15, 2022
- Updated
- Apr 23, 2025
- Vendor
- Discourse
- Product
- Discourse
- Classifications
- CWE-835, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Feb 15, 2022CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Apr 23, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=beta <= 2.9.0.beta1
- Affected versionversion=stable <= 2.8.0
- Affected versionversion=tests-passed <= 2.9.0.beta1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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