Summary
FriendsOfFlarum OAuth: Unauthenticated account takeover via unverified email trust in Discord OAuth provider
Preconditions for exploitation
- Discord sign-in is enabled on the forum.
- The victim has a Flarum account with a known email address.
- The victim's email address is not already associated with a Discord account.
- The attacker creates or configures a Discord account using the victim's email address without verifying it and verifies a phone number instead.
- The attacker authenticates to the forum using that Discord account.
The issue is specific to Discord's ability to return an unverified email address through OAuth. Other bundled providers were not confirmed to be practically exploitable through the same method because they only return verified or confirmed email addresses in the relevant authentication flow.
Patched Versions
Workarounds
Administrators who cannot update immediately should disable the Discord OAuth provider in the extension settings.
Credits
Reported by @faran1512
Impact
An unauthenticated account takeover vulnerability exists in fof/oauth when the Discord OAuth provider is enabled.
Discord allows an account to use an unverified email address when its phone number has been verified. During OAuth authentication, Discord may return that email address with "verified": false.
Affected versions of fof/oauth did not validate this flag and passed the email address to Flarum core as trusted via provideTrustedEmail(). Flarum core could then match the trusted email address to an existing user, link the attacker-controlled Discord identity to that user, and authenticate the attacker as the victim.
An attacker who knows a user's email address can therefore take over the corresponding Flarum account without knowing its password or requiring any interaction from the victim. This includes administrator accounts.
CVE-2026-92161 has a CVSS score of 9.8 (Critical). The vector is network-reachable, no privileges required, and no user interaction. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (1.7.4, 2.0.0-beta.4); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
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fof/oauth to 1.7.4 or later; fof/oauth to 2.0.0-beta.4 or later
Kodem Kai can prioritize this vulnerability in your dependency tree and generate a fix recommendation.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2026-92161? CVE-2026-92161 is a critical-severity security vulnerability in fof/oauth (composer), affecting versions < 1.7.4. It is fixed in 1.7.4, 2.0.0-beta.4.
- How severe is CVE-2026-92161? CVE-2026-92161 has a CVSS score of 9.8 (Critical). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
- Which versions of fof/oauth are affected by CVE-2026-92161? fof/oauth (composer) versions < 1.7.4 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-92161? Yes. CVE-2026-92161 is fixed in 1.7.4, 2.0.0-beta.4. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2026-92161 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2026-92161 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether CVE-2026-92161 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix CVE-2026-92161?
- Upgrade
fof/oauthto 1.7.4 or later - Upgrade
fof/oauthto 2.0.0-beta.4 or later
- Upgrade