CVE-2022-21677: Group advanced search option may leak group and group's members visibility

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.3 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2022-01-14 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-200

Description

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Discourse groups can be configured with varying visibility levels for the group as well as the group members. By default, a newly created group has its visibility set to public and the group's members visibility set to public as well. However, a group's visibility and the group's members visibility can be configured such that it is restricted to logged on users, members of the group or staff users. A vulnerability has been discovered in versions prior to 2.7.13 and 2.8.0.beta11 where the group advanced search option does not respect the group's visibility and members visibility level. As such, a group with restricted visibility or members visibility can be revealed through search with the right search option. This issue is patched in `stable` version 2.7.13, `beta` version 2.8.0.beta11, and `tests-passed` version 2.8.0.beta11 versions of Discourse. There are no workarounds aside from upgrading.

Affected products

discourse: through 2.7.12; 2.8.0-beta1, 2.8.0-beta10, 2.8.0-beta2, 2.8.0-beta3, 2.8.0-beta4, 2.8.0-beta5 (+4)

References

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