NVD / CVE Program· CNA GitHub_M

CVE-2024-38360: Denial of service via Watched Words in Discourse

Noroxi assessment

Priority: Monitor (action score 19/100)

The sources we track (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei, GitHub) show no public exploit code or exploitation in the wild.
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days: 0.46% (FIRST EPSS).
Anyone who can reach it over the internet can trigger it. Administrator privileges are required. No user action is required. No special conditions are required; it is repeatable.
No fixed version is recorded, but the references include a patch (commit or PR) link.

Low priority for now. See the fix and affected versions sections below.

Generated automatically from the record's data: CVSS (NVD and CNA), CISA KEV and SSVC, FIRST EPSS, exploit sources, fixed versions. How we calculate it

Primary sources: NVD · CVE.org · FIRST EPSS

Discourse is an open source platform for community discussion. In affected versions by creating replacement words with an almost unlimited number of characters, a moderator can reduce the availability of a Discourse instance. This issue has been addressed in stable version 3.2.3 and in current betas. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade may manually remove the long watched words either via SQL or Rails console.

MediumCVSS 4.9 · v3.1—No exploit No fix recorded

Denial of service

Published: Jul 15, 2024
Updated: Jun 17, 2026
EPSS: 0.4% · 40th percentile
CWE: CWE-400

Report tools

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Action score

Monitor

Low priority for now.

CVSS: 19 / 40 · 4.9 / 10
CISA KEV: 0 / 30 · Not listed
EPSS: 0 / 30 · 0.4%

CISA SSVC decision

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial

Vulnrichment: CISA's decision-tree inputs.

CNA vs NVD score

NVD: —
CNA · GitHub_M: 4.9; NVD has not scored this yet; the score shown is the CNA’s.

The score given by the assigning authority versus NVD’s independent score. A gap means the severity is contested.

Get told when this record changes

Not in KEV: no record of exploitation in the wild
No public exploit code on record
No fixed version yet

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Noroxi analysis

What does it mean in your environment?

The assessment above is generated automatically from the record's data; it doesn't know your environment. Our team verifies on your systems whether this vulnerability is actually exploitable and which mitigation is enough.

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Affected systems

Is your version affected?

Pick the product and type the version you run. It's compared with this record's version ranges in your browser; the version isn't sent anywhere.

Vendor	Product	CPE
discourse	discourse	cpe:2.3:a:discourse:discourse

Affected versions

NVD version ranges (for catalog products). Add the product to your stack with a version and matching uses these.

discourse discoursebefore 3.3.0
discourse discoursebefore 3.3.2
discourse discourse3.3.0

Versions reported by the vendor

Affected version ranges reported by the assigning authority (GitHub_M). Independent of NVD's CPE analysis and usually ahead of it.

discourse discourse
- stable <= 3.2.2, beta <= 3.3.0.beta2, tests-passed <= 3.3.0.beta2affected

Same product

discourse: all records

Other highest-scoring records for the same primary product.

CVE-2021-41163RCE via malicious SNS subscription payload
45Plan
CVE-2025-68662FinalDestination hostname matching allows SSRF protection bypass
39Monitor
CVE-2023-47121Discourse SSRF vulnerability in Embedding
39Monitor

Published before and after this one in the same product

← EarlierCVE-2024-36122Jul 3, 2024 · Discourse doesn't limit reviewable user serializer payload
17Monitor
← EarlierCVE-2024-37157Jul 3, 2024 · Discourse vulnerable to Server-Side Request Forgery via FastImage
21Monitor
Later →CVE-2024-37165Jul 30, 2024 · Discourse has an XSS via Onebox system
24Monitor

Remediation

Which version to upgrade to

Fix versions compiled from the vendor, package registries and Microsoft. Verify the vendor's note before upgrading.

No fix version is recorded for this entry. Check the references for vendor advisories.

Exploit status

No known public exploit

No public exploit has been observed yet. That doesn't mean you're safe, only that the bar is a little higher.

Research context

For pentesters and researchers: attack profile, score disagreement, timeline, patch commits, credits, variant and chain candidates, bug bounty scope. All derived from existing data; no exploit code.

Timeline

From publication to today: proof of concept, Metasploit module, CISA KEV and fix record. Dates are as reported by the sources.

No dated events beyond publication.

EPSS, last 120 days

FIRST EPSS daily score; only changes of 0.01 or more are recorded (step chart).

Patch and commit links

Commit, PR and diff links among the references. A starting point for patch-diffing and variant hunting; fixes, not exploits.

discourse/discoursecommit 7b53e61

Credits

All researchers

Finders, reporters and analysts named in the CNA record. Click a name for that researcher’s other records.

No credits in the CNA record.

Variant candidates

Same product, same weakness class, within 18 months. If the patch missed the root cause, the sibling bug is here.

CVE-2025-48053329 days apartDiscourse vulnerable to DoS via large URL payload in PM to a bot
34Monitor
CVE-2024-3729915 days apartDiscourse vulnerable to DoS via Tag Group
30Monitor
CVE-2024-24827122 days apartNo rate limits on POST /uploads endpoint in Discourse
30Monitor
CVE-2023-48297185 days apartDiscourse vulnerable to unlimited mentioned users in message serializer
30Monitor
CVE-2023-44388273 days apartMalicious requests can fill up the log files resulting in a deinal of service in Discourse
30Monitor
CVE-2023-36818367 days apartDenial of service via User Custom Sidebar Section Unlimited Link Creation in discourse
30Monitor

Chain candidates

An authentication bypass and a privilege-requiring bug in the same product, published close together: combined they may become an unauthenticated path.

—

Bug bounty scope

The product’s vendor appears in a public program. Matched by name; verify the scope text in the program.

Technical details

Attack conditions

Anyone who can reach it over the internet can trigger it.
Administrator privileges are required.
No user action is required.
No special conditions are required; it is repeatable.

If successful

Confidentiality: none
Integrity: none
Availability: high · the service can be disrupted

Attack vector: Network
Attack complexity: Low
Privileges required: High
User interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality impact: None
Integrity impact: None
Availability impact: High

Weakness class (CWE)

CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

nvd-secondary

Root cause

Code that parses nested structures sets no depth or size limit. A small input can turn into a disproportionate processing load.

The bug in code

The whole CWE-400 class

A representative example of this vulnerability class. Not the vendor's source code; it shows the faulty pattern and its fix.

Vulnerable

1function expand(node) {
2  return node.children.map(expand);
3}

Fixed

1const MAX_DEPTH = 32;
2function expand(node, depth = 0) {
3  if (depth > MAX_DEPTH) throw new Error("too deep");
4  return node.children.map((c) => expand(c, depth + 1));
5}

Attack context

MITRE CAPEC attack patterns and ATT&CK techniques for this weakness class (CWE). A starting point for detection rules and threat hunting.

Attack patterns (CAPEC)

ATT&CK techniques

Endpoint Denial of ServiceT1499

Change log

No changes recorded on tracked fields yet. Score, KEV, exploit maturity and fix status changes appear here.

References

github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/7b53e610c17e38be982dffefa4e5b5a709a3b990

Show all references (1 more)

github.com/discourse/discourse/security/advisories/GHSA-68pm-hm8x-pq2p

Vendor advisories and official records. Exploit/PoC links are deliberately left out.

All records