CVE-2022-46177
Published: 05 January 2023
Summary
CVE-2022-46177 is a medium-severity Insufficient Session Expiration (CWE-613) vulnerability in Discourse Discourse. Its CVSS base score is 5.7 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 39.0% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2022-48998
Vulnerability details
Discourse is an option source discussion platform. Prior to version 2.8.14 on the `stable` branch and version 3.0.0.beta16 on the `beta` and `tests-passed` branches, when a user requests for a password reset link email, then changes their primary email, the…
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old reset email is still valid. When the old reset email is used to reset the password, the Discourse account's primary email would be re-linked to the old email. If the old email address is compromised or has transferred ownership, this leads to an account takeover. This is however mitigated by the SiteSetting `email_token_valid_hours` which is currently 48 hours. Users should upgrade to versions 2.8.14 or 3.0.0.beta15 to receive a patch. As a workaround, lower `email_token_valid_hours ` as needed.
- 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.
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.
Timed refresh of session-related information or on-demand generation plus deletion implements proper session expiration.