CVE-2021-37693
Published: 13 August 2021
Summary
CVE-2021-37693 is a medium-severity Insufficient Session Expiration (CWE-613) vulnerability in Discourse Discourse. Its CVSS base score is 5.3 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 44.4% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2021-24190
Vulnerability details
Discourse is an open-source platform for community discussion. In Discourse before versions 2.7.8 and 2.8.0.beta4, when adding additional email addresses to an existing account on a Discourse site an email token is generated as part of the email verification process.…
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Deleting the additional email address does not invalidate an unused token which can then be used in other contexts, including reseting a password.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Locks the device (typically after inactivity) until re-authentication, addressing insufficient session expiration by preventing indefinite access.
Automatically terminating sessions after a defined period directly enforces session expiration, preventing indefinite session lifetimes that attackers can exploit.
Re-authentication after inactivity or time-based triggers prevents indefinite use of potentially hijacked or stale sessions.
Establishing procedures for lost or compromised authenticators addresses weak password recovery mechanisms.
Terminating sessions and network connections upon completion prevents insufficient session expiration.
Directly enforces termination of network sessions after inactivity or end-of-session, preventing indefinite session lifetime.
Consistent clocks across systems allow session expiration and timeout enforcement to function as intended in distributed environments.
When the non-persistent artifact is a session or connection, mandatory termination implements the missing expiration that CWE-613 describes.