CVE-2026-25712: Gitea Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

CVE-2026-25712 Overview

CVE-2026-25712 is an improper access control vulnerability [CWE-284] affecting Gitea versions before 1.25.5. The flaw resides in organization permission APIs, which perform insufficient visibility checks for hidden members and private organizations. Unauthenticated attackers can query these APIs over the network and enumerate membership data that should remain confidential. The issue is limited to information disclosure and does not permit modification of data or service disruption. Gitea addressed the vulnerability in release 1.25.5 through pull requests #36798 and #36841.

Critical Impact
Remote, unauthenticated attackers can enumerate hidden organization members and private organization metadata through Gitea's permission APIs, exposing internal team structures and identities.

Affected Products

Gitea versions prior to 1.25.5
Self-hosted Gitea instances exposed to untrusted networks
Gitea deployments using private organizations or hidden membership features

Discovery Timeline

2026-07-03 - CVE-2026-25712 published to NVD
2026-07-07 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2026-25712

Vulnerability Analysis

Gitea provides organization-level APIs that report team membership and permission relationships. These endpoints are intended to enforce visibility rules that hide members marked as private and conceal organizations that owners have configured as private. In versions before 1.25.5, the permission API handlers omit or incorrectly evaluate these visibility predicates. As a result, an unauthenticated caller can retrieve identifiers and permission data for accounts and organizations that should be filtered from the response. The disclosure aids reconnaissance against internal engineering structures and can support targeted follow-on attacks such as credential stuffing or social engineering against named maintainers.

Root Cause

The underlying defect is a missing authorization check [CWE-284] in the permission API's response construction path. The handlers query organizational membership without first validating whether the requesting principal has the right to observe hidden users or private organization metadata. The fixes merged in #36798 and #36841 add the missing visibility predicates so responses are filtered according to the viewer's context.

Attack Vector

Exploitation requires only network access to a vulnerable Gitea HTTP endpoint. No authentication, privileges, or user interaction are required. An attacker issues standard REST calls against the organization permission APIs and parses the returned JSON for members and organizations that should have been hidden. The vulnerability affects confidentiality only; integrity and availability are unaffected.

No verified public proof-of-concept code is currently available. Technical remediation details are documented in the Gitea 1.25.5 release notes and the corresponding pull request #36798 and pull request #36841.

Detection Methods for CVE-2026-25712

Indicators of Compromise

Unauthenticated HTTP requests to /api/v1/orgs/{org}/members or related permission endpoints from unexpected source IPs
Bursts of enumeration-style API traffic against Gitea organization or team routes
Access log entries returning 200 OK for organization endpoints without a corresponding authenticated session cookie or token

Detection Strategies

Review Gitea access logs for anonymous callers requesting organization membership APIs, particularly against organizations configured as private
Correlate spikes in organization API 200 responses with the absence of Authorization headers to identify enumeration attempts
Compare pre- and post-patch API responses for the same organizations to identify what data was previously exposed

Monitoring Recommendations

Forward Gitea reverse-proxy or application logs to a centralized analytics platform and alert on high-volume anonymous API calls
Track the running Gitea version through configuration management and flag any host below 1.25.5
Baseline expected API consumers and alert on new user agents or IP ranges querying organization endpoints

How to Mitigate CVE-2026-25712

Immediate Actions Required

Upgrade all Gitea instances to version 1.25.5 or later using the artifacts published on the Gitea 1.25.5 release tag
Restrict network exposure of Gitea administrative and API endpoints to trusted networks or VPN users until the upgrade is complete
Audit which organizations and users rely on private or hidden visibility and inform them that membership may have been enumerated

Patch Information

The vendor released Gitea 1.25.5 containing the fixes merged in pull request #36798 and pull request #36841. These changes add the missing visibility checks in the organization permission APIs. Administrators should apply the upgrade following the standard Gitea update procedure and restart the service. Container-based deployments should pull the 1.25.5 image tag and redeploy.

Workarounds

Place Gitea behind an authenticating reverse proxy that blocks anonymous access to /api/v1/orgs/* endpoints until the patch is applied
Temporarily disable the private organization or hidden member features if their confidentiality guarantees are business-critical and patching must be delayed
Apply web application firewall rules to rate limit and log anonymous requests to organization permission APIs

bash

# Example nginx snippet to block anonymous access to org APIs pre-patch
location ~ ^/api/v1/orgs/ {
    if ($http_authorization = "") {
        return 401;
    }
    proxy_pass http://gitea_backend;
}