When Gitea's built-in SSH server is enabled (`START_SSH_SERVER = true`), the presented public key was looked up with an SQL `LIKE` comparison of its encoded content, which is case-insensitive on some databases, including the default SQLite. An attacker who can construct a case variant of another user's registered RSA public key for which they can derive the private key could have that key matched to the victim's account and authenticate over SSH as that user. Keys are now looked up by fingerprint.

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History

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 19:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description When Gitea's built-in SSH server is enabled (`START_SSH_SERVER = true`), the presented public key was looked up with an SQL `LIKE` comparison of its encoded content, which is case-insensitive on some databases, including the default SQLite. An attacker who can construct a case variant of another user's registered RSA public key for which they can derive the private key could have that key matched to the victim's account and authenticate over SSH as that user. Keys are now looked up by fingerprint.
Title Gitea built-in SSH server authentication bypass through key case folding
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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: Gitea

Published:

Updated: 2026-10-06T19:22:57.192Z

Reserved: 2026-10-04T21:57:35.559Z

Link: CVE-2026-103059

cve-icon Vulnrichment

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cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-10-06T20:17:14.377

Modified: 2026-10-06T20:17:14.377

Link: CVE-2026-103059

cve-icon Redhat

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cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

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