Gitea up to 28.2.x Actions Runner Registration privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as problematic has been reported in Gitea up to 28.2.x. This affects an unknown part of the component Actions Runner Registration. The manipulation leads to privileges management. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-116289. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. There is no exploit available. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Gitea up to 28.2.x and classified as problematic. This issue affects an unknown code of the component Actions Runner Registration. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

Gitea did not reject personal access tokens restricted to public resources (`public-only`) on the organization Actions runner registration-token endpoint, and the runner registered with the resulting token was not limited to public repositories. Holding only such a token with `write:organization` that belongs to an owner of a public organization, an attacker could register an organization-level runner and receive jobs of the organization's private repositories that have Actions enabled, including the workflow content, Actions secrets and variables, and a task token with access to the private repository. The issue widens what the restricted token can reach; it gives nothing beyond what the owner's full account can already do.

The advisory is shared at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-116289 since 11/01/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. Additional levels of successful authentication are needed for exploitation. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available. MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1068 for this issue.

Upgrading to version 28.3.0 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2026-4281). If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Affected

• Open Source Gitea

Productinfo

Name

• Gitea

Version

• 28.0
• 28.1
• 28.2

License

• open-source

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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Entryinfo

If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

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