Executive Summary

CVE-2026-47197 is a vulnerability in the Quest Bot, an open-source Discord bot, that allows moderators with certain permission bits to bypass Discord's normal role hierarchy protections.

Normally, Discord prevents lower-ranked moderators from taking moderation actions against higher-ranked users. However, this bot only checks if the moderator has the required permission bit and does not verify if the target user is below the moderator in the role hierarchy.

Instead, the bot relies on its own role hierarchy, which can outrank both the moderator and the target user. This flaw allows a lower-ranked moderator to ban, kick, timeout, untimeout, warn, or rename higher-ranked users if the bot's role is higher than the target.

The issue affects versions 1.1.5 and below and was patched in version 1.1.6.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can allow lower-ranked moderators to perform unauthorized moderation actions on higher-ranked users, such as banning, kicking, muting, or renaming them.

This bypass of Discord's role hierarchy protections can lead to abuse of power within a Discord server, potentially disrupting server management and community trust.

Since the exploit requires only low privileges and no user interaction, it is relatively easy to abuse in environments where the bot's role outranks privileged users.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability can be detected by verifying if lower-ranked moderators are able to perform moderation actions such as ban, kick, mute, unmute, warn, or rename on higher-ranked users through the Quest Bot.

Specifically, you can test if a moderator with the relevant Discord permission bit but lower role hierarchy can use the bot to act on users with higher roles, which should normally be prevented by Discord.

Suggested commands to test this include using the bot commands for ban, kick, mute, unmute, warn, or nickname targeting a higher-ranked user while logged in as a lower-ranked moderator.

• Attempt to ban a higher-ranked user: !ban @HigherRankedUser
• Attempt to kick a higher-ranked user: !kick @HigherRankedUser
• Attempt to mute a higher-ranked user: !mute @HigherRankedUser
• Attempt to unmute a higher-ranked user: !unmute @HigherRankedUser
• Attempt to warn a higher-ranked user: !warn @HigherRankedUser
• Attempt to rename a higher-ranked user: !nickname @HigherRankedUser NewName

If these commands succeed despite the moderator having a lower role than the target user, the vulnerability is present.

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Mitigation Strategies

The immediate mitigation step is to upgrade the Quest Bot to version 1.1.6 or later, where this vulnerability has been patched.

Until the upgrade is applied, restrict the permissions of lower-ranked moderators to prevent them from using the bot's moderation commands that could exploit this issue.

Additionally, consider adjusting the bot's role in the Discord server so that it does not outrank privileged users, reducing the risk of unauthorized moderation actions.

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Compliance Impact

The provided information does not specify any direct impact of this vulnerability on compliance with common standards and regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA.

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