CVE-2025-21613

Critical

Published: 06 January 2025

Published

06 January 2025

Modified

17 April 2025

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS Score 0.0286 86.3th percentile

Risk Priority 21 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2025-21613 is a critical-severity Argument Injection (CWE-88) vulnerability in Go-Git Project Go-Git. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 13.7% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) and RA-5 (Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning).

Threat & Defense at a Glance

What attackers do: exploitation maps to Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) and 1 other technique. What defenders deploy: see the NIST 800-53 controls recommended below.

Threat & Defense Details

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI

SI-2 Flaw Remediation good match

prevent

Requires timely remediation of the argument injection flaw in go-git by updating to version 5.13.0 or later, directly eliminating the vulnerability.

SI-10 Information Input Validation partial match

prevent

Implements input validation mechanisms to sanitize arguments before they are passed to git-upload-pack, countering the injection vulnerability.

RA-5 Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning partial match

detect

Provides vulnerability scanning to identify systems using vulnerable go-git versions prior to v5.13, enabling proactive patching.

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access

Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.

attack.mitre.org →

T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution Execution

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in client applications to execute code.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

Remote unauthenticated argument injection in a Git library directly enables exploitation of public-facing apps (T1190) and client-side execution via injected Git flags (T1203).

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v18.1

NVD Description

go-git is a highly extensible git implementation library written in pure Go. An argument injection vulnerability was discovered in go-git versions prior to v5.13. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to set arbitrary values to git-upload-pack flags.…

This only happens when the file transport protocol is being used, as that is the only protocol that shells out to git binaries. This vulnerability is fixed in 5.13.0.

Deeper analysisAI

CVE-2025-21613 is an argument injection vulnerability (CWE-88) in go-git, a highly extensible Git implementation library written in pure Go. The flaw affects versions prior to v5.13 and occurs only when the file transport protocol is used, as this is the sole protocol that shells out to Git binaries, enabling the injection.

A remote network attacker requires no privileges, authentication, or user interaction and faces low attack complexity, per the CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). Successful exploitation allows the attacker to set arbitrary values to git-upload-pack flags, resulting in high impacts to confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

The vulnerability is addressed in go-git v5.13.0. Additional details are available in the GitHub security advisory at https://github.com/go-git/go-git/security/advisories/GHSA-v725-9546-7q7m.