CVE-2022-31184: Email activation route can be abused by spammers in Discourse

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2022-08-01 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-770

Description

Discourse is the an open source discussion platform. In affected versions an email activation route can be abused to send mass spam emails. A fix has been included in the latest stable, beta and tests-passed versions of Discourse which rate limits emails. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should manually rate limit email.

Affected products

discourse: through 2.8.6; 2.9.0-beta1, 2.9.0-beta2, 2.9.0-beta3, 2.9.0-beta4, 2.9.0-beta5, 2.9.0-beta6 (+1)

References

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/af1cb735db7fb73217b85d22dbadd1bc824ac0b0
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/security/advisories/GHSA-m5w9-8gp8-2hrf
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/af1cb735db7fb73217b85d22dbadd1bc824ac0b0
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/security/advisories/GHSA-m5w9-8gp8-2hrf

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