GitApplication
CVE-2020-5260
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedAffected versions of Git have a vulnerability whereby Git can be tricked into sending private credentials to a host controlled by an attacker. Git uses external "credential helper" programs to store and retrieve passwords or other credentials from secure storage provided by the operating system. Specially-crafted URLs that contain an encoded newline can inject unintended values into the credential helper protocol stream, causing the credential helper to retrieve the password for one server (e.g., good.example.com) for an HTTP request being made to another server (e.g., evil.example.com), resulting in credentials for the former being sent to the latter. There are no restrictions on the relationship between the two, meaning that an attacker can craft a URL that will present stored credentials for any host to a host of their choosing. The vulnerability can be triggered by feeding a malicious URL to git clone. However, the affected URLs look rather suspicious; the likely vector would be through systems which automatically clone URLs not visible to the user, such as Git submodules, or package systems built around Git. The problem has been patched in the versions published on April 14th, 2020, going back to v2.17.x. Anyone wishing to backport the change further can do so by applying commit 9a6bbee (the full release includes extra checks for git fsck, but that commit is sufficient to protect clients against the vulnerability). The patched versions are: 2.17.4, 2.18.3, 2.19.4, 2.20.3, 2.21.2, 2.22.3, 2.23.2, 2.24.2, 2.25.3, 2.26.1.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysisThe application accepts input without confirming it is well-formed or within expected bounds, so malformed data can push the program into states its author never anticipated. Attackers probe these gaps to trigger crashes, bypass logic, or feed tainted values into more dangerous operations downstream. Remediating it well means validating and normalising every input at the boundary against a strict allow-list — not merely filtering known-bad values.
General guidance for the improper input validation class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
GitApplication
< 2.17.4>= 2.22.0, < 2.22.3
GitApplication
>= 2.18.0, < 2.18.3>= 2.19.0, < 2.19.4>= 2.20.0, < 2.20.3>= 2.21.0, < 2.21.2>= 2.23.0, < 2.23.2>= 2.24.0, < 2.24.2>= 2.25.0, < 2.25.3>= 2.26.0, < 2.26.1
Ubuntu LinuxOperating system
= 16.04= 18.04= 19.10
Debian LinuxOperating system
= 8.0= 9.0= 10.0
FedoraOperating system
= 30= 31= 32= 15.1CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor data2.17.42.18.32.19.4
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2020-5260 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sources- github.com
- packetstormsecurity.com
- github.com
- github.com
- lists.opensuse.org
- lists.opensuse.org
- packetstormsecurity.com
- www.openwall.com
- www.openwall.com
- lists.debian.org
- security.gentoo.org
- support.apple.com
- usn.ubuntu.com
- www.debian.org
- www.openwall.com
- lists.fedoraproject.org
- lists.fedoraproject.org
- lists.fedoraproject.org
- lists.fedoraproject.org
- lists.fedoraproject.org
- lore.kernel.org
- nvd.nist.gov
Practitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2020-5260 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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