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Fencer Intel
high 8.1

CVE-2026-73804 json

Gitea API token scope escalation through HTTP signatures

published 2mo ago modified 24d ago also EUVD-2026-101108 , GHSA-q55v-4cmj-xh65

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository go-gitea/gitea. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
8.1
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 41%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Gitea allows a token with write:user scope to register an attacker-controlled SSH public key on the token owner's account. API requests signed with the corresponding private key authenticate as that account through HTTP Signature without API token scope information, causing route-level token scope checks to be skipped. This converts a user-scoped token into an unscoped API authentication method while retaining the account's normal role and repository permissions.

Patch / fix

Is CVE-2026-73804 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-73804 updated cvss 8.1

code.gitea.io/gitea: Gitea: Privilege escalation via API token scope bypass

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
24d ago

Exploit prediction

0.48% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 41% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/security/advisories/GHSA-q55v-4cmj-xh65 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
CNA 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected products

  • Gitea Gitea

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-266 Incorrect Privilege Assignment
  • CWE-863 Incorrect Authorization

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of go-gitea/gitea published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.