Is this vulnerability remotely exploitable over the internet?

Yes. If the Patreon webhook endpoint of a Discourse instance is reachable from the internet and the `patreon_webhook_secret` is blank, an attacker can remotely send forged webhook requests without prior authentication.

Does an attacker need a valid Patreon or Discourse account to exploit this?

No. Exploitation does not require a valid account on either system; the attacker only needs network access to the webhook URL and knowledge of how the request body is constructed to compute the corresponding HMAC-MD5 with an empty key.

What is the safest general fix pattern for this class of issue?

The safest pattern is to enforce that all webhook and external callback integrations require a strong, non-empty secret (or equivalent credential) and to hard-fail verification when such secrets are missing or invalid, never falling back to permissive behavior.

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(7.5)

Improper Authorization via Blank Webhook Secret (CWE-639) in Discourse Patreon Integration

CVE-2026-26078

Published:

Feb 26, 2026

Status:

Analyzed

Summary

Affected Context

Exploit Preconditions

Why This Happens

Potential Impact

General Mitigation Guidance

How Teams Detect Issues Like This

Frequently Asked Questions

Source

NDV

Recent Vulnerabilities

CWE-78

CRITICAL RISK

CRITICAL

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Remote Code Execution

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CWE-89

CRITICAL RISK

CRITICAL

(9.9)

SQL Injection via PostgreSQL Array/Row Expressions (CWE-89) in WeKnora Query Engine

Remote Code Execution via SQL Injection on the Database Server

March 7, 2026

Vulnerability Type

Category:

Improper Authorization

CWE:

CWE-639

Impact:

Unauthorized modification of Patreon-linked user state and group membership

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(7.5)

CVSS Version:

3.1

Vulnerability Type

Category:

Improper Authorization

CWE:

CWE-639

Impact:

Unauthorized modification of Patreon-linked user state and group membership

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(7.5)

CVSS Version:

3.1

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355 Bryant St. San Francisco, CA 94107, USA

Ask AI for summary of CodeAnt

Improper Authorization via Blank Webhook Secret (CWE-639) in Discourse Patreon Integration

Summary

Affected Context

Exploit Preconditions

Why This Happens

Potential Impact

General Mitigation Guidance

How Teams Detect Issues Like This

Frequently Asked Questions

Source

Recent Vulnerabilities

CRITICAL RISK

CRITICAL

(9.9)

Command Injection in MCP Stdio Configuration Validation (CWE-78) in WeKnora

CRITICAL RISK

CRITICAL

(9.9)

SQL Injection via PostgreSQL Array/Row Expressions (CWE-89) in WeKnora Query Engine

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Catch This CVE While Code Is Being Written

Ship clean & secure code faster

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