CVE-2024-50338 — git-credential-manager
HIGHCVE-2024-50338 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.4) Information Exposure vulnerability in git-credential-manager. A fix is available for git-credential-manager — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Carriage-return character in remote URL allows malicious repository to leak credentials in Git Credential Manager
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-50338.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-50338 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,156 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
git-credential-managerReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects NuGet packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Description
The Git credential protocol is text-based over standard input/output, and consists of a series of lines of key-value pairs in the format key=value. Git's documentation restricts the use of the NUL (\0) character and newlines to form part of the keys1 or values.
When Git reads from standard input, it considers both LF and CRLF2 as newline characters for the credential protocol by virtue of calling strbuf_getline that calls to strbuf_getdelim_strip_crlf. Git also validates that a newline is not present in the value by checking for the presence of the line-feed character (LF, \n), and errors if this is the case. This captures both LF and CRLF-type newlines.
Git Credential Manager uses the .NET standard library StreamReader class to read the standard input stream line-by-line and parse the key=value credential protocol format. The implementation of the ReadLineAsync method considers LF, CRLF, and CR as valid line endings. This is means that .NET considers a single CR as a valid newline character, whereas Git does not.
This mismatch of newline treatment between Git and GCM means that an attacker can craft a malicious remote URL such as:
https://\rhost=targethost@badhost
..which will be interpreted by Git as:
protocol=https
host=badhost
username=\rhost=targethost
This will instead be parsed by GCM as if the following has been passed by Git:
protocol=https
host=badhost
username=
host=targethost
This results in the host field being resolved to the targethost value. GCM will then return a credential for targethost to Git, which will then send this credential to the badhost host.
Impact
When a user clones or otherwise interacts3 with a malicious repository that requires authentication, the attacker can capture credentials for another Git remote. The attack is also heightened when cloning from repositories with submodules when using the --recursive clone option as the user is not able to inspect the submodule remote URLs beforehand.
Patches
Workarounds
Only interacting with trusted remote repositories, and do not clone with --recursive to allow inspection of any submodule URLs before cloning those submodules.
Fixed versions
This issue is fixed as of version 2.6.1.
Footnotes
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| .NETNuGet | git-credential-manager | all versions | 2.6.1dotnet add package git-credential-manager --version 2.6.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for git-credential-manager, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update git-credential-manager to 2.6.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-50338 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-50338 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-50338. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-50338 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-50338 across NuGet dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.