CVE-2018-18644 in Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE
An issue was discovered in GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition 11.x before 11.2.7, 11.3.x before 11.3.8, and 11.4.x before 11.4.3. It allows Information Exposure via a Gitlab Prometheus integration.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/13/2023
This vulnerability exists in GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition versions prior to specific patch releases, representing a significant information exposure flaw within the platform's monitoring integration capabilities. The issue specifically affects versions 11.x before 11.2.7, 11.3.x before 11.3.8, and 11.4.x before 11.4.3, indicating a widespread impact across multiple release branches of the software. The vulnerability manifests through the GitLab Prometheus integration, which serves as a critical monitoring and metrics collection component that many organizations rely upon for operational visibility and system health assessment.
The technical flaw stems from inadequate access controls and information disclosure mechanisms within the Prometheus integration module. When GitLab integrates with Prometheus for monitoring purposes, the system fails to properly restrict access to sensitive metrics and operational data that should remain protected within the internal system. This misconfiguration allows unauthorized users or attackers who can interact with the Prometheus endpoint to gain access to confidential information that would typically be restricted to administrators or system-level users. The vulnerability essentially creates a backdoor through which sensitive operational data can be extracted without proper authentication or authorization checks.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is substantial as it exposes critical system information that could be leveraged by threat actors to gain deeper insights into the GitLab environment and underlying infrastructure. The exposed information may include detailed metrics about user activities, system performance, repository access patterns, and potentially sensitive operational data that could aid in planning more sophisticated attacks. This information exposure aligns with CWE-200, which categorizes weaknesses related to information exposure, and represents a direct violation of the principle of least privilege that should govern access to system metrics and monitoring data.
Organizations utilizing GitLab in production environments face significant risk from this vulnerability as it essentially undermines the security boundaries established by the platform's access control mechanisms. The exposure of Prometheus metrics could reveal internal system architecture details, user behavior patterns, and operational configurations that attackers could exploit to craft targeted attacks. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to techniques involving reconnaissance and credential access, as the leaked information provides attackers with valuable intelligence for subsequent phases of their attack lifecycle. The vulnerability also demonstrates a failure in the principle of defense in depth, as monitoring integration components should never become entry points for unauthorized information access.
The recommended mitigation strategy involves immediately upgrading to the patched versions of GitLab where the vulnerability has been addressed through proper access control enforcement and information disclosure prevention mechanisms. Organizations should also implement network-level restrictions to limit access to Prometheus endpoints, enforce strong authentication for monitoring interfaces, and conduct thorough audits of monitoring integration configurations. Additionally, implementing proper network segmentation and access controls around monitoring systems can provide additional layers of protection against similar vulnerabilities in the future. The fix typically involves strengthening authentication checks and ensuring that Prometheus metrics are only accessible to authorized users with appropriate privileges, thereby preventing unauthorized information exposure through the integration layer.