CVE-2026-7541 Denial of service vulnerability in GitHub Enterprise Server allowed service disruption via unauthenticated API endpoint

Medium 6.3 Published 7 May 2026 Updated 8 May 2026

Unauthenticated attackers can cause service disruption in GitHub Enterprise Server by sending deeply nested JSON payloads to an API endpoint.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2026-7541?

CVE-2026-7541 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Github Enterprise Server, published on 7 May 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A denial of service vulnerability was identified in GitHub Enterprise Server that allowed an unauthenticated attacker to cause service disruption by sending crafted requests with deeply nested JSON payloads to an unauthenticated API endpoint. The endpoint parsed user-controlled JSON request bodies without size or depth limits, causing excessive CPU and memory consumption. This vulnerability affected all versions of GitHub Enterprise Server prior to 3.21 and was fixed in versions 3.20.2, 3.19.6, 3.18.9, 3.17.15, and 3.16.18. This vulnerability was reported via the GitHub Bug Bounty program.

Weakness: CWE-770

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-7541?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Github Enterprise Server.

How do I fix CVE-2026-7541?

No fix has been published for CVE-2026-7541 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2026-7541 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-7541 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Github Enterprise Server vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-3738-jvgh-jh3h.