CVE-2026-26973: Discourse

Medium severity, CVSS 4.3. EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. Versions prior to 2025.12.2, 2026.1.1, and 2026.2.0 have an IDOR (Insecure Direct Object Reference) in `ReviewableNotesController`. When `enable_category_group_moderation` is enabled, a user belonging to a category moderation group can create or delete their own notes on **any** reviewable in the system, including reviewables in categories they do not moderate. The controller used an unscoped `Reviewable.find` and the `ensure_can_see` guard only checked whether the user could access the review queue in general, not whether they could access the specific reviewable. Only instances with `enable_category_group_moderation` enabled are affected. Staff users (admins/moderators) are not impacted as they already have access to all reviewables. The issue is patched in versions 2025.12.2, 2026.1.1, and 2026.2.0 by scoping the reviewable lookup through `Reviewable.viewable_by(current_user)`. As a workaround, disable the `enable_category_group_moderation` site setting. This removes the attack surface as only staff users will have access to the review queue.

Affected products

• Discourse Discourse: before 2025.12.0 (fixed in 2025.12.0); from 2026.1.0, before 2026.1.1 (fixed in 2026.1.1); version 2026.2.0 only

Published 2026-02-26. Last modified 2026-06-17.