CVE-2026-109553

Gitea SSH certificate principal impersonation of other users

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: October 18, 2026 at 06:51 PM UTC
Updated: October 19, 2026 at 09:17 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorGitea

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%
SSVC
No known exploit

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.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

90%
All versions

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatableTotal impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.5HIGHCISA-ADP
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
HIGH
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusAWAITING ANALYSIS

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