Description

Token public-only scope bypassed on Limited-visibility owners (Repository + Package categories) — residual after CVE-2026-25714 / PR #37118

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "9.6",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-13T17:17:25.247Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-13T17:17:25.247Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability involves an authorization bypass regarding token scopes affecting limited-visibility owners across repository and package categories.\nIt represents a residual security flaw remaining after the remediation attempts for CVE-2026-25714 and pull request #37118.\nThe flaw allows tokens restricted to a public-only scope to successfully bypass these limitations when interacting with limited-visibility resources under specific owner configurations.\nAn attacker capable of exploiting this authorization flaw can gain unauthorized access to sensitive private or limited-visibility repositories and packages despite holding a token explicitly constrained to public-only scopes.\nThe risk implications include unauthorized data exposure, potential intellectual property loss, and supply chain integrity compromises within affected repository and package management systems.\nExploitation requires a valid token with a public-only scope and the ability to target resources governed by limited-visibility owners that fail to correctly enforce scope boundaries due to incomplete validation logic left unaddressed by prior patches.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability lies in incomplete access control enforcement and flawed scope validation logic within the permission verification subsystem governing repository and package categories.\nSpecifically, the subsystem fails to adequately validate whether a token restricted by a public-only scope is attempting to access resources belonging to limited-visibility owners.\nThis issue persists as a residual bypass following the implementation of CVE-2026-25714 and pull request #37118, indicating that the previous permission checks overlooked specific edge cases in owner visibility hierarchies.\nThe vulnerable components are the authorization and scope-checking modules responsible for parsing API requests against repository and package endpoints.\nDuring an attack, an actor initiates an API request to access a restricted repository or package managed by a limited-visibility owner while authenticating using a token explicitly minted or configured with a public-only scope.\nBecause the authorization module incorrectly evaluates the token's scope against the limited-visibility context, the request bypasses boundary enforcement checks.\nThe system improperly treats the public-only token as authorized for the restricted resource due to a logic flaw in how owner visibility constraints intersect with token capabilities.\nAuthentication is required in the form of a valid token, but no elevated privileges beyond the standard public-only scope are necessary to trigger the bypass.\nThe attack operates over standard network exposures applicable to the repository and package management interfaces.\nPost-exploitation impact includes the unauthorized reading, cloning, or interacting with private codebases and packages, leading to severe confidentiality breaches."
}