CVE-2026-33540Distribution affected by pull-through cache credential exfiltration via www-authenticate bearer realm
- 7.5HighCVSS base score
- 0.29%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 79% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- YesPublic exploitsa reference or SSVC says so
Description
Distribution is a toolkit to pack, ship, store, and deliver container content. Prior to 3.1.0, in pull-through cache mode, distribution discovers token auth endpoints by parsing WWW-Authenticate challenges returned by the configured upstream registry. The realm URL from a bearer challenge is used without validating that it matches the upstream registry host. As a result, an attacker-controlled upstream (or an attacker with MitM position to the upstream) can cause distribution to send the configured upstream credentials via basic auth to an attacker-controlled realm URL. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.1.0.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. A reference of the record is tagged as an exploit. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.
Show the exploits1
References tagged exploit1 reference
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 17 days later
· 17 days later
Published
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.29% · top 79% of all CVEs (15 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.5.
Affected products
- affected < 3.1.0
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Gogithub.com/distribution/distributionGHSA-3p65-76g6-3w7r (opens in a new tab)
- Gogithub.com/distribution/distribution/v3GHSA-3p65-76g6-3w7r (opens in a new tab)
References
References1
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-19289 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-3p65-76g6-3w7r (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-33540)Record last updated .