CVE-2026-20888 Gitea Pull Requests Auto-Merge: Read-Only Users Can Cancel Scheduled Auto-Merge via Web Endpoint (Authorization Bypass)

What is CVE-2026-20888?

CVE-2026-20888 is a medium-severity missing authorization vulnerability in Gitea Gitea, published on 22 Jan 2026. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Gitea does not properly verify authorization when canceling scheduled auto-merges via the web interface. A user with read access to pull requests may be able to cancel auto-merges scheduled by other users.

Weakness: CWE-862, CWE-284

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-20888?

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

Products include Gitea Gitea.

How do I fix CVE-2026-20888?

Upgrade github.com/go-gitea/gitea to 1.25.4 or later.

Upgrade, and check permissions on every request on the server, not only in the interface. More about Missing authorization.

Is CVE-2026-20888 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-20888 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
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BIT-gitea-2026-20888, GHSA-9cgq-wp42-4rpq, GHSA-ccq9-c5hv-cf64, GO-2026-4366.