CVE-2024-53858

Description

The gh cli is GitHub’s official command line tool. A security vulnerability has been identified in the GitHub CLI that could leak authentication tokens when cloning repositories containing `git` submodules hosted outside of GitHub.com and ghe.com. This vulnerability stems from several `gh` commands used to clone a repository with submodules from a non-GitHub host including `gh repo clone`, `gh repo fork`, and `gh pr checkout`. These GitHub CLI commands invoke git with instructions to retrieve authentication tokens using the `credential.helper` configuration variable for any host encountered. Prior to version `2.63.0`, hosts other than GitHub.com and ghe.com are treated as GitHub Enterprise Server hosts and have tokens sourced from the following environment variables before falling back to host-specific tokens stored within system-specific secured storage: 1. `GITHUB_ENTERPRISE_TOKEN`, 2. `GH_ENTERPRISE_TOKEN` and 3. `GITHUB_TOKEN` when the `CODESPACES` environment variable is set. The result being `git` sending authentication tokens when cloning submodules. In version `2.63.0`, these GitHub CLI commands will limit the hosts for which `gh` acts as a credential helper to source authentication tokens. Additionally, `GITHUB_TOKEN` will only be used for GitHub.com and ghe.com. Users are advised to upgrade. Additionally users are advised to revoke authentication tokens used with the GitHub CLI and to review their personal security log and any relevant audit logs for actions associated with their account or enterprise

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
gh	25.10 questing	Not affected
	25.04 plucky	Ignored end of life, was needs-triage
	24.10 oracular	Ignored end of life, was needs-triage
	24.04 LTS noble	Fixed 2.45.0-1ubuntu0.3+esm2
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Not in release

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Notes

john-breton

A patch was introduced in 2.46.0-3 (covering questing and up)

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
gh	Upstream: 1fe14c9

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	6.5 · Medium
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	High
Privileges required	None
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	Low
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:L

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

USN-8012-1
GitHub CLI vulnerabilities
4 February 2026