What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-22869: Improper access control in GitHub Enterprise Server allows self-hosted runners to execute outside their control group

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 1.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2021-09-24 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-668

Description

An improper access control vulnerability in GitHub Enterprise Server allowed a workflow job to execute in a self-hosted runner group it should not have had access to. This affects customers using self-hosted runner groups for access control. A repository with access to one enterprise runner group could access all of the enterprise runner groups within the organization because of improper authentication checks during the request. This could cause code to be run unintentionally by the incorrect runner group. This vulnerability affected GitHub Enterprise Server versions from 3.0.0 to 3.0.15 and 3.1.0 to 3.1.7 and was fixed in 3.0.16 and 3.1.8 releases.

Affected products

• GitHub Enterprise Server: from 3.0.0 before 3.0.16; from 3.1.0 before 3.1.8 — fixed in 3.0.16, 3.1.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: GitHub Enterprise Server 3.0.16, 3.1.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-server%403.0/admin/release-notes#3.0.16
• https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-server%403.1/admin/release-notes#3.1.8
• https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-server%403.0/admin/release-notes#3.0.16
• https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-server%403.1/admin/release-notes#3.1.8

Get alerted when CVE-2021-22869 or the next vulnerability affects your stack