CVE-2023-36465 — decidim
CRITICALCVE-2023-36465 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) CWE-284 vulnerability in decidim. A fix is available for decidim — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Decidim has broken access control in templates
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-36465.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-36465 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,156 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
decidim💎decidim-templates💎decidim-templates💎decidimReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Decidim is a participatory democracy framework, written in Ruby on Rails, originally developed for the Barcelona City government online and offline participation website. The templates module doesn't enforce the correct permissions, allowing any logged-in user to access to this functionality in the administration panel. An attacker could use this vulnerability to change, create or delete templates of surveys. This issue has been patched in version 0.26.8 and 0.27.4.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | decidim | ≥ 0.23.2&&< 0.26.8 | 0.26.8bundle update decidim --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | decidim-templates | ≥ 0.23.2&&< 0.26.8 | 0.26.8bundle update decidim-templates --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | decidim-templates | ≥ 0.27.0&&< 0.27.4 | 0.27.4bundle update decidim-templates --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | decidim | ≥ 0.27.0&&< 0.27.4 | 0.27.4bundle update decidim --conservative |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for decidim, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update decidim to 0.26.8 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-36465 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2023-36465 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-36465. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-36465 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-36465 across RubyGems dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.