CVE-2018-20494 in Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE
An issue was discovered in GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition before 11.4.13, 11.5.x before 11.5.6, and 11.6.x before 11.6.1. It has Incorrect Access Control.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/18/2024
This vulnerability represents a critical access control flaw in GitLab's permission system that allows unauthorized users to access private projects and repositories. The issue affects multiple versions of GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition, specifically targeting releases before 11.4.13, 11.5.6, and 11.6.1 respectively. The vulnerability stems from insufficient validation of user permissions when accessing certain project resources, creating a path for privilege escalation attacks. According to CWE-285, this manifests as an improper authorization flaw where the system fails to properly verify that users have the necessary permissions to access specific resources.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability occurs within GitLab's project access control mechanisms, where the application does not adequately validate whether a user possesses the required privileges to view or interact with private project contents. Attackers can exploit this by manipulating API requests or direct access attempts to projects they should not have access to, potentially gaining read access to confidential source code, issue trackers, and other sensitive project data. This flaw particularly impacts organizations relying on GitLab for code repository management and collaborative development workflows where private project isolation is paramount.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data exposure, as it can lead to complete compromise of development environments and intellectual property theft. Organizations using affected GitLab versions face significant risk of unauthorized access to proprietary codebases, potentially exposing sensitive information such as database credentials, API keys, and other confidential development artifacts. The vulnerability also affects the integrity of GitLab's security model, undermining trust in the platform's access control mechanisms and potentially enabling further attacks through lateral movement within the development environment.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability involve immediate upgrade to patched GitLab versions, specifically 11.4.13, 11.5.6, or 11.6.1 depending on the current installation. Organizations should also implement additional monitoring of access logs for unusual patterns and conduct comprehensive security audits of their GitLab installations. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this vulnerability under privilege escalation techniques, specifically targeting the T1078 credential access sub-technique. System administrators should review and enforce proper access control policies, ensuring that all users have appropriate least privilege access and that the principle of least privilege is maintained across all GitLab project memberships and permissions.