Discourse is an open source platform for community discussion. A malicious request can cause production log files to quickly fill up and thus result in the server running out of disk space. This problem has been patched in the 3.1.1 stable and 3.2.0.beta2 versions of Discourse. It is possible to temporarily work around this problem by reducing the client_max_body_size nginx directive. client_max_body_size will limit the size of uploads that can be uploaded directly to the server.
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discourse | Discourse | * | 3.1.1 (including) |
| Discourse | Discourse | 3.2.0-beta1 (including) | 3.2.0-beta1 (including) |
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either:
The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question.
The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute – and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.