CVE-2026-20750

Critical

Published: 22 January 2026

Published

22 January 2026

Modified

29 January 2026

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score 9.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

EPSS Score 0.0001 3.5th percentile

Risk Priority 18 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2026-20750 is a critical-severity Improper Access Control (CWE-284) vulnerability in Gitea Gitea. Its CVSS base score is 9.1 (Critical).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 3.5th 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 AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).

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

AC-3 Access Enforcement good match

prevent

Directly enforces approved authorizations for access to resources, addressing Gitea's failure to validate project ownership across organizations.

SI-2 Flaw Remediation good match

prevent

Requires timely remediation of flaws like this improper access control vulnerability via patches such as Gitea v1.25.4.

AC-6 Least Privilege partial match

prevent

Enforces least privilege to restrict project write access within the user's organization only, mitigating cross-organization modifications.

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 →

T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

CVE enables remote exploitation of improper access control in public-facing Gitea server (T1190) to perform unauthorized cross-organization modifications, directly facilitating privilege escalation (T1068).

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

NVD Description

Gitea does not properly validate project ownership in organization project operations. A user with project write access in one organization may be able to modify projects belonging to a different organization.

Deeper analysisAI

CVE-2026-20750 is a critical vulnerability in Gitea, an open-source self-hosted Git service, stemming from improper validation of project ownership during organization project operations. Published on 2026-01-22, it has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.1 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N) and maps to CWE-284 (Improper Access Control). The flaw enables a user with project write access in one organization to modify projects belonging to a different organization.

An authenticated attacker possessing write access to a project within one organization can remotely exploit this vulnerability with low complexity and no user interaction. Successful exploitation allows modification of projects in unrelated organizations, resulting in high impacts to confidentiality and integrity, such as unauthorized data alteration or exposure.

Gitea mitigated this issue in release v1.25.4, as announced in their blog post and detailed in the GitHub security advisory GHSA-h4fh-pc4w-8w27. Patches are provided via pull requests #36318 and #36373, with full release notes available on the v1.25.4 tag page. Security practitioners should update affected Gitea instances promptly to prevent exploitation.