Gitea flaw exposed private container images on 30,000 hosts

Security researchers disclosed a vulnerability in the open-source code hosting platform Gitea, tracked as CVE-2026-27771, that allowed unauthenticated users to pull private container images from affected instances. The flaw applies to all Gitea releases prior to version 1.26.2 and remained unreported for nearly four years.

The defect is located in Gitea’s container registry. According to U.K.-based security firm Noscope, the private label on container repositories did not prevent public access, letting anyone on the internet retrieve images without an account, password or other credentials. Noscope reported the issue likely affected more than 30,000 deployments across more than 30 countries, with the largest concentrations in China, the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

Organizations identified among the exposed deployments include healthcare providers, aerospace manufacturers, retail infrastructure operators and internet service providers. Noscope cautioned that forks of Gitea should be treated as potentially impacted until maintainers confirm otherwise; testing by the firm confirmed the fork Forgejo is affected.

Gitea maintainers released version 1.26.2 to fix the vulnerability. Administrators are advised to apply the update as soon as possible. For operators that cannot patch immediately, Noscope recommended a temporary configuration change: set REQUIRE_SIGNIN_VIEW=true under the [service] section in the Gitea configuration to require sign-in for viewing content. The firm noted this workaround can disrupt intentionally public containers.

At the time of disclosure no CVSS score had been assigned and no additional technical specifics about the flaw were released. System owners are advised to scan their environments to identify vulnerable Gitea versions or impacted forks and to review any publicly accessible container repositories for sensitive or proprietary content.

Gitea is commonly used to host repositories and container images on self-managed infrastructure. The disclosure identifies a prolonged window during which private images on affected instances may have been accessible without authentication.