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How to harden a Gitea container (and is gitea:1.22 safe for your repositories?)

Gitea hosts your source: git repositories, access tokens, CI webhooks, and the web UI developers push and pull through all day. A stock docker run gitea/gitea:1.22 keeps that server behind a boundary weaker than the code deserves. Graded on IronClaw's seven-dimension containment scale, the default configuration scores 48 of 100, grade D (porous). Higher is safer. A git server exists to be reached by browsers and git clients, so it cannot take --network=none the way a co-located database can. That sets an honest ceiling of 89 of 100, grade B, and the flags below reach it. Here are the exact gaps and fixes from the scan data.

Every number here comes from a read-only docker inspect of gitea:1.22, the same data behind its isolation scorecard. No workload is executed. How scoring works →

Where the default configuration leaks

ironctl scan grades seven independent containment boundaries. On a default docker run gitea/gitea:1.22, three fail and one warns:

Dimension Verdict Score What the scan found
Non-root user (uid != 0) ❌ FAIL 0/15 runs as root (uid 0); a container escape starts with host-uid 0
Dropped capabilities ❌ FAIL 4/20 default capability set retained (CAP_NET_RAW, CAP_MKNOD, and more)
Seccomp profile ✅ PASS 15/15 seccomp profile active
Network isolation / egress ⚠️ WARN 4/15 network=bridge: outbound egress is possible
Read-only root filesystem ❌ FAIL 0/10 root filesystem is writable
No docker.sock exposure ✅ PASS 15/15 no control socket mounted
No shared host namespaces ✅ PASS 10/10 no host PID/IPC/network sharing

The two that should worry you most are root and the writable rootfs. A Gitea process that escapes as root escapes as root on the host, right next to every repository and secret it was serving. A writable rootfs lets an attacker who lands code execution through a hook, webhook, or web CVE persist inside the image. The network dimension stays a WARN by design here, because a git server has to accept connections.

Harden it: the exact --fix remediation

ironctl scan my-gitea --fix prints one remediation per failed dimension, then one hardened run. For gitea:1.22:

  • --user 1000:1000 (Non-root user, +15): pin the non-root git uid so an escape does not begin as host uid 0. Point the data directory at a volume this uid owns.
  • --cap-drop=ALL (Dropped capabilities, +16): drop every Linux capability; Gitea needs none of the default set to serve HTTP and SSH on high ports.
  • --read-only --tmpfs /tmp (Read-only rootfs, +10): make the root filesystem read-only and mount /data as an explicit writable volume. Removes the persistence surface.
  • Scoped private network (Network, held at WARN by design): a git server exists to be reached by developers and CI, so --network=none would break it. Put Gitea on a user-defined network scoped to just its reverse proxy and clients, with no default route out. The network dimension holds at a WARN (4 of 15). That is the honest ceiling.

Before and after

# Before: 48/100, grade D
docker run -d --name gitea gitea/gitea:1.22

# After: 89/100, grade B (scoped private network for proxy and clients)
docker run -d --name gitea-hardened \
  --user 1000:1000 \
  --cap-drop=ALL \
  --security-opt=no-new-privileges \
  --read-only --tmpfs /tmp \
  -v gitea-data:/data \
  --network=git-internal \
  gitea/gitea:1.22

Rescan: ironctl scan gitea-hardened reports 89/100 grade B. A 41-point swing with no custom image build, just the right flags. The only dimension still short of full marks is the network (4 of 15), because a git server exists to be reached by its developers and CI; network=none would score the last points but leave nothing able to connect. That is the honest ceiling for this role, and it is a long way from the default D.

Verify it on your own Gitea

# install (Homebrew)
brew install ironsecco/ironclaw/ironclaw

# grade your running container, then print the fixes
ironctl scan my-gitea
ironctl scan my-gitea --fix

ironctl scan also reads a docker-compose.yml service or a Kubernetes manifest, so you can grade the Gitea in your stack, not just a bare docker run.

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