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How the CVE Works:
This vulnerability resides in the `discourse-policy` plugin. Under normal circumstances, only users belonging to specific “policy creation groups” are authorized to create interactive policy acceptance widgets within posts. The flaw allows a user who does not possess these administrative privileges to bypass group membership checks. By exploiting specific conditions—likely related to how the plugin validates user roles during post rendering or widget instantiation—an unauthorized user can inject or create a functional policy widget. Once created, this widget can record user acceptances, effectively allowing a low-privilege user to establish binding policy mechanisms they should not control. The issue arises from improper authorization checks within the plugin’s controller or service layer, failing to verify group membership before permitting widget creation. This could lead to misuse of the policy feature, where arbitrary users manipulate community governance tools. The vulnerability is patched by enforcing stricter authorization logic, ensuring only allowed groups can perform this action.
dailycve form:
Platform: Discourse
Version: <2026.2.1
Vulnerability: Bypass policy creation
Severity: Medium (6.5)
date: 2026-03-19
Prediction: Patch already released
What Undercode Say:
Check if discourse-policy plugin is enabled rails console SiteSetting.policy_enabled Disable plugin as workaround (via Rails console) SiteSetting.policy_enabled = false Verify applied patch version grep -E "2026.[0-9]+.[0-9]+" /var/www/discourse/VERSION
Exploit:
An attacker without policy creation privileges crafts a request to the endpoint responsible for creating policy widgets, spoofing parameters to bypass group checks, resulting in unauthorized policy widget deployment.
Protection from this CVE:
Upgrade to versions 2026.3.0-latest.1, 2026.2.1, or 2026.1.2. Alternatively, disable the `discourse-policy` plugin by setting `policy_enabled` to false.
Impact:
Unauthorized users can create policy widgets, leading to potential misuse of community governance features, confusion in policy tracking, and erosion of administrative control over binding mechanisms.
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Sources:
Reported By: nvd.nist.gov
Extra Source Hub:
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