CVE-2023-22488

MEDIUM
Published Jan 12, 20233y ago · Modified Jun 17, 20262w ago
5.4 CVSS 3.1
Medium
Find Similar
Published Jan 12, 2023 3y ago
Last Modified Jun 17, 2026 2w ago

Description

Flarum is a forum software for building communities. Using the notifications feature, one can read restricted/private content and bypass access checks that would be in place for such content. The notification-sending component does not check that the subject of the notification can be seen by the receiver, and proceeds to send notifications through their different channels. The alerts do not leak data despite this as they are listed based on a visibility check, however, emails are still sent out. This means that, for extensions which restrict access to posts, any actor can bypass the restriction by subscribing to the discussion if the Subscriptions extension is enabled. The attack allows the leaking of some posts in the forum database, including posts awaiting approval, posts in tags the user has no access to if they could subscribe to a discussion before it becomes private, and posts restricted by third-party extensions. All Flarum versions prior to v1.6.3 are affected. The vulnerability has been fixed and published as flarum/core v1.6.3. All communities running Flarum should upgrade as soon as possible to v1.6.3. As a workaround, disable the Flarum Subscriptions extension or disable email notifications altogether. There are no other supported workarounds for this issue for Flarum versions below 1.6.3.

CVSS Details

Base Score
5.4
Exploitability
2.8
Impact
2.5
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
Attack Vector Network
Attack Complexity Low
Privileges Required Low
User Interaction None
Scope Unchanged
Confidentiality Low
Integrity Low
Availability None

Threat Intelligence

No active exploitation signals — not in CISA KEV and no EPSS score yet.

Exploit & Patch Status
No Known Exploit
Patch Available

Weaknesses 1

CWE-862 Missing Authorization Authorization

Affected Products 1

VendorProductVersionRange
flarumflarum* <1.6.3

References 2

  • github.com https://github.com/flarum/framework/commit/d0a2b95dca57d3dae9a0d77b610b1cb1d0b1766a
    PatchThird Party Advisory
  • github.com https://github.com/flarum/framework/security/advisories/GHSA-8gcg-vwmw-rxj4
    Third Party Advisory

Remediation

  • github.com https://github.com/flarum/framework/commit/d0a2b95dca57d3dae9a0d77b610b1cb1d0b1766a
    PatchThird Party Advisory