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Adding a private/unlisted room to a community exposes room metadata in an unauthorised manner.

Low severity GitHub Reviewed Published Aug 31, 2021 in matrix-org/synapse • Updated Feb 1, 2023

Package

pip matrix-synapse (pip)

Affected versions

< 1.41.1

Patched versions

1.41.1

Description

Impact

Unauthorised users can access the name, avatar, topic and number of members of a room if they know the ID of the room. This vulnerability is limited to homeservers where:

  • the vulnerable homeserver is in the room; and
  • untrusted users are permitted to create groups (communities).

By default, only homeserver administrators can create groups. However, homeserver administrators can already access this information in the database or using the admin API. As a result, only homeservers where the configuration setting enable_group_creation has been set to true are impacted.

Patches

Server administrators should upgrade to 1.41.1 or higher.

Workarounds

Server administrators can set enable_group_creation to false in their homeserver configuration (this is the default value) to prevent creation of groups by non-administrators.

Administrators that are using a reverse proxy could, with partial loss of group functionality, block the following endpoints:

  • /_matrix/client/r0/groups/{group_id}/rooms
  • /_matrix/client/unstable/groups/{group_id}/rooms

References

n/a

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, e-mail us at security@matrix.org.

References

@richvdh richvdh published to matrix-org/synapse Aug 31, 2021
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Aug 31, 2021
Reviewed Aug 31, 2021
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Sep 1, 2021
Last updated Feb 1, 2023

Severity

Low
3.1
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2021-39163

GHSA ID

GHSA-jj53-8fmw-f2w2

Source code

Credits

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