CVE-2025-21614

High

Published: 06 January 2025

Published

06 January 2025

Modified

30 September 2025

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS Score 0.0022 44.6th percentile

Risk Priority 15 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2025-21614 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) vulnerability in Go-Git Project Go-Git. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 44.6th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) and SC-6 (Resource Availability).

Threat & Defense at a Glance

What attackers do: exploitation maps to Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004). 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

Mandates timely identification, reporting, and correction of flaws such as the resource exhaustion vulnerability in go-git by upgrading to v5.13.

SC-6 Resource Availability good match

prevent

Limits resource allocation to processes handling Git server responses, preventing exhaustion from specially crafted inputs.

SC-5 Denial-of-service Protection good match

prevent

Protects against denial-of-service events including resource exhaustion triggered by malicious Git server responses.

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

DoS via crafted server responses directly enables T1499.004 (Application or System Exploitation) to crash or degrade the go-git client endpoint.

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

NVD Description

go-git is a highly extensible git implementation library written in pure Go. A denial of service (DoS) vulnerability was discovered in go-git versions prior to v5.13. This vulnerability allows an attacker to perform denial of service attacks by providing specially…

crafted responses from a Git server which triggers resource exhaustion in go-git clients. Users running versions of go-git from v4 and above are recommended to upgrade to v5.13 in order to mitigate this vulnerability.

Deeper analysisAI

CVE-2025-21614 is a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability in go-git, a highly extensible Git implementation library written in pure Go. The flaw affects go-git versions prior to v5.13, with users running versions from v4 and above particularly advised to upgrade. It stems from CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption), rated at CVSS 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H), where specially crafted responses from a Git server can trigger resource exhaustion in go-git clients.

An attacker controlling a malicious or compromised Git server can exploit this vulnerability remotely without authentication or user interaction. By sending crafted responses during client-server interactions, the attacker induces excessive resource consumption on the go-git client, leading to denial of service through crashes or unresponsiveness.

The go-git's GitHub security advisory (GHSA-r9px-m959-cxf4) recommends upgrading to version v5.13 or later to mitigate the issue, as this release addresses the resource exhaustion problem in client handling of server responses.