Gitea Actions job token spoofing of instance-signed commits

Summary

CVECVE-2026-116474
StatePUBLISHED
AssignerGitea
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-11-01 10:18:35 UTC
Updated2026-11-01 10:18:35 UTC
DescriptionThe `GITEA_TOKEN` of a Gitea Actions job authenticates as the `gitea-actions` system user, and the `/api/v1/user` email and GPG key endpoints accepted that user, so a job could register an email address and a GPG key on it; without required email confirmation (the default) the address is stored as activated. Commit verification treats a key without a real owner as the instance signing key, so any user who can run a workflow job could make commits signed with their own key show as trusted and signed by the instance in every repository where they appear, including pull requests to repositories the user cannot write to. The impact is limited to the displayed signature status: enforcement such as required signed commits only checks that a signature is verified and is unaffected, and no access is gained. The `/api/v1/user` routes now reject system users.

Risk And Classification

EPSS: 0.001080000 probability, percentile 0.011640000 (date 2026-11-02)

Problem Types: CWE-347 | CWE-347 CWE-347: Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Gitea Gitea affected 1.19.0 28.3.0 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
github.com/go-gitea/gitea/security/advisories/GHSA-mf6p-vqpw-3r7x 88ee5874-cf24-4952-aea0-31affedb7ff2 github.com
blog.gitea.com/release-of-28.3.0 88ee5874-cf24-4952-aea0-31affedb7ff2 blog.gitea.com
github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/40115 88ee5874-cf24-4952-aea0-31affedb7ff2 github.com
github.com/go-gitea/gitea/releases/tag/v28.3.0 88ee5874-cf24-4952-aea0-31affedb7ff2 github.com
github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/39945 88ee5874-cf24-4952-aea0-31affedb7ff2 github.com
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

CNA: https://github.com/bircni (en)

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