CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2026-48501 — GitHub CLI (gh) is GitHub’s official command line tool

Critical CVSS 9.1

GitHub CLI (gh) is GitHub’s official command line tool. Prior to 2.93.0, GitHub CLI incorrectly includes authorization header in API requests to TUF repository mirrors via gh attestation, gh release verify, and gh release verify-asset commands. The CLI uses a shared HTTP client with an authentication layer that automatically attaches tokens to outgoing requests. This layer lacks accurate host detection and can incorrectly attribute the target host, providing it with a token it should never receive. Specifically, the host normalization logic collapses any *.github.com subdomain to github.com, so a request to tuf-repo.github.com (a GitHub Pages site, not a GitHub API endpoint) is treated as a request to github.com and receives the user's github.com token. For hosts that don't match github.com or a known GHES instance at all, the resolver falls back to GH_ENTERPRISE_TOKEN if set. The gh attestation, gh release verify and gh release verify-asset commands fetch data from several external hosts as part of their normal operation (TUF metadata from tuf-repo.github.com and tuf-repo-cdn.sigstore.dev, artifact bundles from Azure Blob Storage). Because these requests go through the same authe…

Severity
Critical
CVSS
9.1 (3.1)
Published
2026-05-29
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-863

Affected products

  • github / cli

Matched remediation archetype

Authorization bypass, IDOR, and cross-tenant access

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map object and action authorization checks across API, UI, batch, import/export, and background-job paths.
  • Identify tenant, ownership, role, and policy boundaries for affected resources and administrative operations.
  • Use synthetic fixtures to compare intended access matrices without accessing another user's real data.

Remediate safely

  • Enforce server-side authorization at each resource access and state transition using the authenticated principal and trusted tenant context.
  • Scope data queries by tenant and ownership; treat client-supplied identifiers, roles, and policy claims as untrusted.
  • Add deny-by-default policy tests for horizontal and vertical access across every affected transport.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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