Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-38974 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-38974 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-38974?
- Informational severity, published 15 July 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Jelmer Vernooij Dulwich <= 1.1.0.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-38974?
- A patch was published on 2026-03-25: Pull request 2123 merged to fix host key verification. Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-38974 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-38974?
- Check whether anything you run is named in the advisory. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
A vulnerability exists in Dulwich's 'contrib/paramiko_vendor.py' where SSH host key verification is disabled or missing. By default, the implementation fails to load known hosts or reject unknown keys, which is a violation of secure SSH transport practices. An attacker positioned on the network between the client and the Git server could perform a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack to intercept or alter Git traffic. The issue is addressed in versions following 1.1.0 by properly loading known hosts and enforcing key rejection by default.
Affected products
- Jelmer Vernooij Dulwich <= 1.1.0
Timeline
- 2026-03-25: patched: Pull request 2123 merged to fix host key verification.
- 2026-07-15: disclosed: CVE-2026-38974 published.