Disclosure summary
A privilege escalation vulnerability was identified in GitHub Enterprise Server that allowed an authenticated Enterprise admin to gain root SSH access to the appliance by exploiting a symlink escape in pre-receive hook environments. By crafting a malicious repository and environment, an attacker could replace system binaries during hook cleanup and execute a payload that adds their own SSH key to the root user’s authorized keys—thereby granting themselves root SSH access to the server. To exploit this vulnerability, the attacker needed to have enterprise admin privileges. This vulnerability affected all versions of GitHub Enterprise Server prior to 3.19, and was fixed in versions 3.14.20, 3.15.15, 3.16.11, 3.17.8, 3.18.2. This vulnerability was reported via the GitHub Bug Bounty program.
Source-reported weakness categories
CWE-59
Source-specific records & product guidance
Sources retain their own attribution and scoring. Follow the original record to confirm affected versions, fixed releases, and configuration conditions.
NIST National Vulnerability Database · NVD-CVE-2025-11578
Open original source · Updated Oct 07, 2026
Only CPE matches marked vulnerable=true are indexed. AND/OR platform conditions must be checked in the original NVD record.
| Vendor | Product / association | Version / bounds |
|---|---|---|
| github | enterprise_server | * {"versionStartIncluding":"3.18.0","versionEndExcluding":"3.18.2"} |
Original records & references
- NIST NVD record
- CVE Program record
- docs.github.com — Release Notes, Vendor Advisory
- docs.github.com — Release Notes, Vendor Advisory
- docs.github.com — Release Notes, Vendor Advisory
- docs.github.com — Release Notes, Vendor Advisory
- docs.github.com — Release Notes, Vendor Advisory
PUBLISHED 2025-11-10T18:15:41-05:00
MODIFIED 2026-10-07T17:10:00-04:00
INGESTED 2026-10-08T12:35:23-04:00