Executive brief
Gitea is a self-hosted Git service platform used by organizations to manage code repositories. The vulnerability allows unauthenticated attackers to bypass input validation when creating repositories, submitting maliciously crafted field values that lack proper length and format checks. This can result in unauthorized repository modifications, data corruption, or exposure of sensitive repository metadata.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an improper input validation flaw (CWE-20) in Gitea's repository creation API and web form handlers. Affected fields include template-related parameters with length constraints and enumeration-type fields such as trust model and object format. The missing validation allows attackers to send oversized strings or invalid enum values via network requests without authentication or user interaction. Successful exploitation could lead to repository state corruption, unauthorized access to protected repositories, or service degradation. The issue was patched in version 1.25.5 by adding comprehensive validation constraints to both the API option struct and web form struct, enforcing maximum length limits and valid enum values.
Affected products
- Gitea Gitea < 1.25.5
Timeline
- 2026-07-03: disclosed: Vulnerability published to GitHub Advisory Database
- 2026-03-16: patched: Fix released in Gitea 1.25.5