High severity · published Oct 18, 2026
CVE-2026-109553
Gitea SSH certificate principal impersonation of other users
7.5
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Gitea resolved the principals of an SSH certificate by searching the content of all stored public keys instead of only principal keys. When Gitea trusts a user certificate authority (`SSH_TRUSTED_USER_CA_KEYS`) and accepts arbitrary principals (`SSH_AUTHORIZED_PRINCIPALS_ALLOW=anything`), a user could register another user's public key line as their own principal, or a holder of a certificate signed by that authority could list it, and then authenticate as the owner of that key through the HTTP signature API and the built-in SSH server. Instances that do not trust a user certificate authority are not affected.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 9% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
GI
Gitea · Gitea
through 28.1.0 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-109553
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-109553
blog.gitea.com
https://blog.gitea.com/release-of-28.2.0/
github.com
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/39839
github.com
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/39847
github.com
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/releases/tag/v28.2.0
github.com
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/security/advisories/GHSA-vcp6-2qc6-gvq3
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