Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-58055

Access Control in Discourse ≤ 3.5.1

Published
01 October 2025
Modified
23 October 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 4.3
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0024 15th percentile
Risk Priority 35 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-58055 is a medium-severity Improper Access Control (CWE-284) vulnerability in Discourse Discourse. Its CVSS base score is 4.3 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data from Information Repositories (T1213); ranked at the 15th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

This vulnerability is AI-related — categorised as Enterprise AI Assistants; in the Privacy and Disclosure risk domain.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and AC-4 (Information Flow Enforcement) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Discourse is an open-source community discussion platform. In versions 3.5.0 and below, the Discourse AI suggestion endpoints for topic “Title”, “Category”, and “Tags” allowed authenticated users to extract information about topics that they weren’t authorized to access. By modifying the…

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“topic_id” value in API requests to the AI suggestion endpoints, users could target specific restricted topics. The AI model’s responses then disclosed information that the authenticated user couldn’t normally access. This issue is fixed in version 3.5.1. To workaround this issue, users can restrict group access to the AI helper feature through the "composer_ai_helper_allowed_groups" and "post_ai_helper_allowed_groups" site settings.

CWE(s)

AI Security AnalysisAI

AI Category
Enterprise AI Assistants
Risk Domain
Privacy and Disclosure
OWASP Top 10 for LLMs 2025
None mapped
Classification Reason
Matched keywords: ai

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1213 Data from Information Repositories Collection
Adversaries may leverage information repositories to mine valuable information.
Why these techniques?

The vulnerability enables authenticated users to disclose unauthorized information from Discourse topics, functioning as an information repository, via API parameter manipulation (IDOR).

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-33415Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2025-32376Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2026-28218Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2023-23615Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2026-27152Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2026-33393Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2023-49099Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2026-44783Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2023-43814Same product: Discourse Discourse
CVE-2023-49098Same vendor: Discourse

Affected Assets

discourse
discourse
3.6.0 · ≤ 3.5.1 · ≤ 3.6.0

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • AC-3 Access Enforcement
  • AC-6 Least Privilege
  • AC-4 Information Flow Enforcement
Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 8 hardening rules · 4 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V10.3.5

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

prevent

Directly enforces authorization checks on topic_id supplied to the AI suggestion endpoints so that users cannot retrieve data from topics they are not permitted to access.

prevent

Limits the privileges granted to authenticated users for the composer_ai_helper_allowed_groups and post_ai_helper_allowed_groups features, reducing the set of topics that can be queried via the vulnerable endpoints.

prevent

Enforces information-flow rules that prevent the AI model responses (which contain topic metadata) from being returned to principals lacking the required topic-level access rights.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.AA-05 full match
prevents

Enforcing authorization policy and least privilege directly blocks user-controlled key tampering that bypasses access checks.

PR.IR-01 mostly match
prevents

Logical access controls prevent unauthorized data access that results from missing authorization checks on object references.

PR.PS-01 mostly match
prevents

Hardened baselines and deviation monitoring directly eliminate most configuration-induced access-control defects, yet CWE-284 also encompasses code-level and design flaws outside the scope of configuration management alone.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices catch most access-control defects during design/coding/testing (mostly), yet leave residual risk from runtime configuration, architecture, and operational controls (partial).

PR.AA-01 partial match
prevents

PR.AA-01 supplies managed identities/credentials that support but do not implement access-control decisions, so it only partially prevents CWE-284 in either direction.

PR.AA-03 partial match
prevents

Authentication directly blocks unauthenticated actors (partial prevention of CWE-284) but leaves authorization logic, policy enforcement, and role checks untouched, so the control neither eliminates nor fully mitigates the broader weakness.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

prevents

Defining and enforcing explicit access rights and restrictions for each entity directly stops the assignment of permissions that exceed what is required, eliminating the root condition that allows improper access control.

prevents

Formal authorization, role-based provisioning, and timely revocation of access rights directly stop the creation of accounts or permissions that exceed what the business actually needs.

prevents

By enforcing explicit rules on which identities or groups may perform read, write, delete or execute operations and by denying anonymous access to sensitive data, the control directly stops the creation of overly permissive or missing access-control checks.

prevents

Requiring one-to-one mapping of identities to entities and timely removal of unused identities directly stops attackers from leveraging stale or shared accounts to bypass access restrictions.

prevents

By explicitly transferring security roles and responsibilities when personnel change jobs or leave, the control reduces the chance that former employees retain access rights they no longer need, thereby limiting improper access control.

prevents

Physical entry controls enforce explicit authorization and authentication at every access point, directly stopping unauthorized actors from reaching information-processing assets.

References