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High · 7.5 CVE-2026-109553 EUVD-2026-103983

Gitea SSH certificate principal impersonation of other users

Published Oct 18, 2026 · Updated Nov 2, 2026 · Assigned by Gitea

Description

Gitea resolved the principals of an SSH certificate by searching the content of all stored public keys instead of only principal keys. When Gitea trusts a user certificate authority (`SSH_TRUSTED_USER_CA_KEYS`) and accepts arbitrary principals (`SSH_AUTHORIZED_PRINCIPALS_ALLOW=anything`), a user could register another user's public key line as their own principal, or a holder of a certificate signed by that authority could list it, and then authenticate as the owner of that key through the HTTP signature API and the built-in SSH server. Instances that do not trust a user certificate authority are not affected.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Gitea Gitea ≤ 28.1.0 —

References