Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-55987 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-55987 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-55987?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 8.1, published 21 July 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Gitea < 1.27.0; code.gitea.io/gitea (Go) < 1.27.0, SEMVER:introduced=0,fixed=1.27.0; gitea.dev (Go) SEMVER:introduced=0,fixed=1.27.0.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-55987?
- Yes. code.gitea.io/gitea (Go): upgrade to 1.27.0 or later; gitea.dev (Go): upgrade to 1.27.0 or later. Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-55987 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a network appliance.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-55987?
- Check whether you run Gitea, code.gitea.io/gitea (Go) or gitea.dev (Go) at an affected version. 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.
How to fix
- code.gitea.io/gitea (Go): upgrade to 1.27.0 or later
go get code.gitea.io/gitea@v1.27.0 - gitea.dev (Go): upgrade to 1.27.0 or later
go get gitea.dev@v1.27.0
Technical details
An authorization bypass exists in Gitea's OAuth2 sign-in callback logic within `routers/web/auth/oauth.go`. The application attempts to distinguish between accounts deactivated by an administrator and those disabled by an auto-sync cron job by checking if the stored `RefreshToken` is empty. However, for providers like GitHub or OIDC sources without `offline_access`, the refresh token is always empty. Consequently, when a deactivated user authenticates via these providers, Gitea incorrectly identifies them as eligible for auto-reactivation and sets `IsActive=true`. This allows deactivated users to regain full session access, including administrative rights if applicable, provided they can still authenticate with the external provider. The issue is resolved in version 1.27.0.
Affected products
- Gitea Gitea < 1.27.0
Identifiers
- CVE-2026-55987
- GHSA-vrhc-jjfc-m3m3
- GO-2026-6078
Timeline
- 2026-07-13: patched: Version 1.27.0 released
- 2026-07-21: advisory: GitHub Advisory published