CVE-2025-68934 | Discourse Has Denial of Service (DoS) Vulnerability in Drafts Creation Endpoint

Discourse is an open source discussion platform. In versions prior to 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0, authenticated users can submit crafted payloads to /drafts.json that cause O(n^2) processing in Base62.decode, tying up workers for 35-60 seconds per request. This affects all users as the shared worker pool becomes exhausted. This issue is patched in versions 3.5.4, 2025.11.2, 2025.12.1, and 2026.1.0. Lowering the max_draft_length site setting reduces attack surface but does not fully mitigate the issue, as payloads under the limit can still trigger the slow code path.

Published: 2026-01-28 Last update: 2026-01-30 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Analyzed，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2025-68934 is rated Low Risk (31.9/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.05%). Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2025-68934

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-03-01 0.04% 0.05% +0.01%
2 2026-01-29 — 0.04% —

Full EPSS history (2 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2025-68934

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 2.8 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2025-68934

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2025-68934

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
discourse discourse < 3.5.4 cpe:2.3:a:discourse:discourse:*:*:*:*:stable:*:*:*
discourse discourse >= 2025.11.0, < 2025.11.2 cpe:2.3:a:discourse:discourse:*:*:*:*:stable:*:*:*
discourse discourse 2025.12.0 cpe:2.3:a:discourse:discourse:2025.12.0:*:*:*:stable:*:*:*
discourse discourse 2026.1.0 cpe:2.3:a:discourse:discourse:2026.1.0:*:*:*:stable:*:*:*

References for CVE-2025-68934

cvelogic Threat Intelligence