CVE-2021-45331 Reuse of one time passwords allowed in Gitea

What is CVE-2021-45331?

CVE-2021-45331 is a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in Gitea Gitea, published on 9 Feb 2022. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

An Authentication Bypass vulnerability exists in Gitea before 1.5.0, which could let a malicious user gain privileges. If captured, the TOTP code for the 2FA can be submitted correctly more than once.

Weakness: CWE-287

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-45331?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including code.gitea.io/gitea and gitea. It affects 1 product.

Products include Gitea Gitea.

How do I fix CVE-2021-45331?

Upgrade code.gitea.io/gitea to 1.5.0 or later.

Upgrade, and rotate credentials and sessions that may have been exposed. More about Authentication bypass.

Is CVE-2021-45331 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-45331 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Gitea Gitea

• CVE-2026-60004 Gitea Code Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2026-73278 Gitea WebAuthn bypass during OAuth and OIDC sign-in Critical 9.8
• CVE-2026-94205 Gitea fork workflow approval bypass through maintainer-triggered events Critical 9.8
• CVE-2022-42968 Gitea vulnerable to Argument Injection Critical 9.8
• CVE-2021-45330 Improper Privilege Management in Gitea Critical 9.8

All Gitea Gitea vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BIT-gitea-2021-45331, CLEANSTART-2025-HO72707, GHSA-hfmf-q69j-6m5p, GO-2022-0315.