CVE-2018-14604 in Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE
An issue was discovered in GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition before 10.8.7, 11.0.x before 11.0.5, and 11.1.x before 11.1.2. XSS can occur in the tooltip of the job inside the CI/CD pipeline.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/10/2020
This vulnerability resides in the GitLab continuous integration and delivery pipeline functionality where user-provided input is not properly sanitized before being rendered in tooltips associated with CI/CD jobs. The issue affects multiple versions of GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition, specifically those prior to 10.8.7, 11.0.5, and 11.1.2 respectively. The vulnerability manifests when tooltips display job information that includes unescaped user-controlled data, creating an avenue for cross-site scripting attacks. This represents a classic input validation and output encoding flaw that allows malicious actors to inject arbitrary javascript code through job descriptions or other user-editable fields within the CI/CD pipeline interface.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs when a user creates or modifies a CI/CD job with malicious script content in fields that are subsequently displayed in tooltips. When other users interact with these tooltips, the embedded javascript executes in their browser context, potentially leading to session hijacking, data exfiltration, or further compromise of the GitLab instance. The vulnerability is categorized under CWE-79 as Cross-Site Scripting, specifically in the context of tooltip rendering where input validation fails to properly escape special characters that could be interpreted as HTML or javascript code. This flaw falls under the ATT&CK technique T1211 - Exploitation for Privilege Escalation and T1566 - Phishing, as it can be leveraged to deliver malicious payloads to authenticated users within the GitLab environment.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple script execution, as it can be weaponized to create persistent threats within the development environment. Attackers can craft malicious tooltips that execute when users view job details, potentially stealing session cookies, redirecting users to malicious sites, or even injecting additional malicious code into the CI/CD pipeline itself. This creates a significant risk for organizations that rely heavily on GitLab for their software development lifecycle, as compromised tooltips could lead to unauthorized access to source code repositories, deployment credentials, or other sensitive development assets. The vulnerability is particularly dangerous in enterprise environments where multiple developers interact with CI/CD pipelines daily, creating numerous potential attack vectors.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability involve implementing proper input sanitization and output encoding mechanisms for all user-provided data that appears in tooltips and other UI elements. Organizations should immediately upgrade to patched versions of GitLab where available, as version 10.8.7, 11.0.5, and 11.1.2 respectively contain the necessary fixes. Additionally, administrators should implement content security policies that restrict script execution within the GitLab interface, and consider implementing web application firewalls to detect and block suspicious script content. Regular security audits of user input handling mechanisms should be conducted to identify similar vulnerabilities in other parts of the application. The fix typically involves ensuring that all user-provided content is properly escaped before rendering in tooltip contexts, following secure coding practices that align with OWASP Top Ten recommendations for preventing XSS vulnerabilities in web applications.