Critical Gitea vulnerability now exploited in the wild (CVE-2026-60004)
Attackers are actively exploiting critical Gitea RCE CVE-2026-60004 via the diffpatch endpoint, prompting CISA KEV addition and at least one cryptomining compromise.
CISA added CVE-2026-60004, a critical code injection flaw in Gitea's diffpatch endpoint, to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog after in-the-wild attacks. An attacker with repository write access, or an unauthenticated visitor on instances with open registration, can execute arbitrary shell commands as the Gitea OS user. A disclosed incident saw an automated scanner register an account and deploy a loader and cryptominer inside a Docker container within about 11 seconds, with no persistence mechanism found. Gitea patched the flaw in v1.27.1, and CISA ordered US federal civilian agencies to update by August 28, 2026.
- CISA added CVE-2026-60004 to the KEV catalog, confirming in-the-wild exploitation.
- Flaw enables RCE as the Gitea service account via repository-controlled Git hooks.
- Instances with open registration are exploitable by unauthenticated users.
- Observed attack installed a cryptominer; no cron, systemd, or SSH persistence was found.
- Fixed in Gitea 1.27.2; federal patching deadline is August 28, 2026.
- CVEs
- CVE-2026-60004
Vulnerabilities mentioned
All| CVE | Vulnerability | CVSS | EPSS | Signals | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-60004 | Unauthenticated RCE in Gitea via diffpatch API Git Hook Injection | 9.8 | 24% | KEVPoC ×4 | KEV |
From the original article
2 min read at helpnetsecurity.com
Attackers have begun exploiting CVE-2026-60004, a critical code injection vulnerability in the Gitea Git platform, CISA confirmed on Tuesday by adding the vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.
By @zeljkazorz · helpnetsecurity.com
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