VulnerabilityPublished 16 Mar 2026Updated 17 Mar 2026

CVE-2025-68971: forgejo · DoS

Affects forgejoSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

6.5Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 41% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 16 Mar 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHubforgejo/forgejo`pkg:github/forgejo/forgejo`Other threats	Affected <=13.0.3	Fixed in–

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-68971, organizations should implement strict file size limits on attachments within Forgejo, either through configuration settings or reverse proxy controls. Monitoring and alerting on unusually large file uploads can help detect attempted exploitation. Restricting upload permissions to trusted users and enforcing the principle of least privilege reduces the attack surface. Network-level controls such as rate limiting and web application firewalls (WAFs) can help prevent resource exhaustion attacks. Administrators should stay informed about Forgejo security advisories and apply patches promptly once available. Additionally, isolating Forgejo instances in resource-limited containers or virtual machines can contain the impact of resource exhaustion. Regular backups and incident response plans should be in place to recover quickly from potential service disruptions.

Description

CVE-2025-68971 is a medium-severity denial of service (DoS) vulnerability in Forgejo versions up to 13.0.3. The issue arises from the attachment component, which allows an attacker with limited privileges to upload extremely large multi-gigabyte files associated with issues or releases. This can exhaust system resources, leading to service disruption. Exploitation does not require user interaction but does require some level of privileges. No known exploits are currently reported in the wild. The vulnerability impacts availability but does not affect confidentiality or integrity. Organizations using Forgejo should monitor for updates and implement controls to restrict attachment sizes to mitigate risk. The threat primarily affects organizations relying on Forgejo for source code management and issue tracking, especially those with exposed or shared upload capabilities.

Impact

The primary impact of CVE-2025-68971 is denial of service, which can disrupt the availability of Forgejo services. Organizations relying on Forgejo for critical development, issue tracking, and release management may experience downtime or degraded performance, affecting productivity and project timelines. Resource exhaustion from large file uploads could also lead to increased operational costs due to emergency remediation or hardware strain. Since the vulnerability requires some level of privileges, insider threats or compromised user accounts could be leveraged to exploit this issue. Although no direct data breach or integrity compromise is involved, the unavailability of the platform can indirectly affect business operations, especially in environments with continuous integration and deployment pipelines. The lack of known exploits in the wild reduces immediate risk but does not eliminate the threat, particularly as attackers may develop exploits once the vulnerability is widely known.

Summary

CVE-2025-68971 is a denial of service vulnerability identified in Forgejo, an open-source forge software used for source code management and issue tracking, through version 13.0.3. The vulnerability stems from the attachment component, which does not enforce adequate restrictions on the size of uploaded files. An attacker with limited privileges can exploit this by uploading multi-gigabyte files as attachments to issues or releases. This excessive file size can overwhelm server resources such as disk space, memory, or processing capacity, causing the application or underlying system to become unresponsive or crash, resulting in denial of service. The CVSS score of 6.5 (medium severity) reflects that the attack can be launched remotely over the network with low complexity and no user interaction, but requires some privileges (PR:L). The vulnerability is categorized under CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption), indicating that the root cause is insufficient input validation or resource management. No patches or exploits are currently publicly available, but the risk remains significant for affected versions. This vulnerability does not compromise confidentiality or integrity but impacts availability, potentially disrupting development workflows and project management activities dependent on Forgejo.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 24 Mar 2026, 00:58 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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