GHSA-c39w-43gm-34h5: Gogs has Path Traversal in organization name that results in RCE through Git hooks
Summary
Organization names containing path traversal sequences (../) are accepted by Gogs, and repositories under them are written to paths following these path traversals. This allows storing/retrieving data for repositories at arbitrary locations on the filesystem.
By creating nested structure of Git repositories, one can overwrite the other's hooks configuration to result in Remote Code Execution (RCE).
Details
During organization creation, internal/database/org.go calls os.MkdirAll(repox.UserPath(org.Name)) without sanitizing org.Name.
https://github.com/gogs/gogs/blob/d7571322a04a29476d4241406ed50bf7eef0a5b7/internal/database/org.go#L165
Repository creation uses this name to decide where to write the Git bare repository's (org/name.git). By setting the org name to ../../../../tmp/test, and creating a repository under that organization, it gets written under /tmp/test on the server.
https://github.com/gogs/gogs/blob/d7571322a04a29476d4241406ed50bf7eef0a5b7/internal/repox/repox.go#L57-L58
An attacker can abuse this in a clever way by writing to the /data/gogs/data/tmp/local-r/1 directory, being a local worktree of the git repositories inside of Gogs. These directories are editable by Git. By creating a repository nested inside of there, files like config and hooks/update are now referenced through the path traversal, and are editable by Git. This allows the attacker to edit the hooks/update script with malicious Bash commands and then to trigger the hook.
The steps to exploit this inside of Gogs are roughly (ignoring some syncing dummy actions):
1. Create regular outer repository and get its ID
2. Create organization named ../../../../data/gogs/data/tmp/local-r/{ID}/nested
3. Create a repository inside this organization (eg. rce), which will be written into the local clone of the outer repository
4. From the outer repository, edit nested/rce.git/hooks/update to contain malicious shell commands
5. Interact with the rce repository again to trigger the upda
Details
Original advisory: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-c39w-43gm-34h5
Exploitation outlook
EPSS (FIRST.org) estimates each CVE’s probability of exploitation in the next 30 days — here is the CSIRTS.com read on those numbers.
- Low exploitation riskCVE-2026-528130.92% 30-day exploitation probability — currently an unlikely target, but scores change as exploit code circulates. Riskier than 57% of all scored CVEs.
Referenced CVEs
| CVE | CSIRTS overview | External |
|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-52813 | coverage & exploitation status | NVD · CVE.org |
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