Critical Gitea RCE Vulnerability CVE-2024-XXXX Exposes Servers

Key Takeaways

• A critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, CVE-2026-59774, has been discovered in Gitea.
• The flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to read arbitrary files from Gitea servers and potentially execute malicious code.
• Gitea versions from 1.22.1 up to and including 1.27.0 are affected.
• A patch is available in Gitea version 1.27.1.

Critical Gitea RCE Vulnerability Exposes Servers

A severe security vulnerability in the Gitea self-hosted Git service, identified as CVE-2026-59774, presents a significant risk to affected servers. This flaw permits unauthenticated remote attackers to gain unauthorized access to arbitrary files and potentially escalate their attack to achieve full remote code execution.

Vulnerability Details and Impact

The GitHub advisory classifies the Gitea flaw under the identifier GHSA-6v53-hr58-556r and assigns it a Critical severity rating. Its CVSS v3.1 vector, CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H, indicates that exploitation can be performed remotely without any authentication or user interaction. Successful exploitation can lead to a complete compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability for the affected system.

The core of this vulnerability resides within Gitea’s repository markup-rendering feature. An attacker can craft and send a malicious request to the POST /{owner}/{repo}/markup endpoint of any suitable public repository. Since this route is accessible to anonymous users when a repository is public and its code unit is enabled, attackers do not need write permissions to the repository or an authenticated Gitea account to initiate the attack.

Exploitation Mechanism

Attackers can leverage the Org-mode rendering functionality by submitting content with an .org filename. The Org-mode renderer, when processing the #+INCLUDE directive, accepts absolute file paths. In vulnerable Gitea versions, the underlying go-org library is initialized without overriding its default file-reading callback. Consequently, the library directly processes the supplied path, reading files based on the operating system’s permissions for the Gitea service account.

This allows attackers to retrieve sensitive files readable by the Gitea service account. High-value targets for exfiltration include the app.ini configuration file, deployment metadata, OAuth credentials, JWT-related secrets, database settings, and other locally accessible application materials. The vulnerability is categorized as CWE-22 (Path Traversal).

The advisory further warns that this arbitrary file read could pave the way for remote code execution. If attackers manage to expose the INTERNAL_TOKEN, they could potentially inject a malicious Git hook. This hook could then execute attacker-controlled commands with the privileges of the Gitea operating-system user when an anonymous user clones a repository.

What You Should Do

• Immediately Upgrade: All Gitea deployments running affected versions (1.22.1 through 1.27.0) must be upgraded to version 1.27.1 or a later patched release without delay.
• Review Logs: Security teams should examine server logs for any unusual or suspicious requests directed at repository markup endpoints. Pay close attention to requests utilizing Org-mode rendering, .org filenames, or containing suspicious #+INCLUDE directives.
• Rotate Credentials: After patching, it is critical to rotate any potentially exposed credentials. This includes internal tokens, OAuth secrets, JWT keys, database passwords, and any other integration credentials stored within the app.ini configuration file.

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