CVE-2026-20750

CriticalUpdated

Published: 22 January 2026

Published

22 January 2026

Modified

27 June 2026

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score v3.1 9.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

EPSS Score 0.0035 26.6th percentile

Risk Priority 70 floored blend · peak EPSS

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 26.6th 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 AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).

Deeper analysis

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.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-4266

Vulnerability details

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.

CWE(s): CWE-284

Related Threats

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 v19.0