What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-96404: Gitea installer authentication bypass for existing accounts

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2026-10-06 · updated 2026-10-13
• Weakness: CWE-287

Description

When Gitea's web installer is reachable against a database that already contains users, such as after `INSTALL_LOCK` has been reset to `false`, submitting the install form with an administrator username matching an existing account issued an authenticated session for that account without verifying its password. If the account is an administrator, the session grants full administrative access, including changing the account's password. Databases with a single user also did not require the reinstall confirmation.

Affected products

• Gitea Open Source Git Server: before 28.0.0 — fixed in 28.0.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Gitea Open Source Git Server 28.0.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://blog.gitea.com/release-of-28.0.0/
• https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/39400
• https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/releases/tag/v28.0.0
• https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/security/advisories/GHSA-9h7g-h754-c8x2

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