CVE-2025-11578 HIGH

CVE-2025-11578: Pre-Receive Hook Path Collision Vulnerability in GitHub Enterprise Server Allowing Privilege Escalation

Vendor Github
Product Enterprise Server
Weakness CWE-59
Published November 10, 2025
Last update December 2, 2025

CVSS base score

7.5/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity High
Privileges required High
User interaction None
Confidentiality
Integrity

CVSS vector

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

What the vulnerability does

01Description

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.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

November 10, 2025 CVE published
December 2, 2025 Record updated