CVE-2018-20495 in Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE
An issue was discovered in GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition 11.3.x and 11.4.x before 11.4.13, 11.5.x before 11.5.6, and 11.6.x before 11.6.1. It allows Information Exposure.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/18/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-20495 represents a critical information exposure flaw affecting GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition versions within specific release streams. This issue manifests in versions 11.3.x and 11.4.x before 11.4.13, 11.5.x before 11.5.6, and 11.6.x before 11.6.1, creating a significant security risk for organizations relying on these GitLab deployments. The flaw stems from inadequate access controls and improper validation of user permissions within the application's authentication and authorization mechanisms, allowing unauthorized parties to gain access to sensitive information that should remain restricted to authorized personnel only.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability involves a failure in the application's permission checking system, where specific API endpoints or administrative functions do not properly validate user credentials or role-based access controls. This weakness enables attackers to exploit the system's information disclosure mechanisms through crafted requests that bypass normal access restrictions. The flaw operates at the application layer and can be leveraged through network-based attacks without requiring elevated privileges or complex exploitation techniques. According to CWE classification, this vulnerability maps to CWE-200, which specifically addresses "Information Exposure," representing a broad category of issues where sensitive data is inadvertently exposed to unauthorized users. The vulnerability's impact is particularly severe given that GitLab serves as a central platform for code repositories, issue tracking, and collaboration, making the exposure of information potentially devastating for organizations' development workflows and intellectual property protection.
The operational impact of CVE-2018-20495 extends beyond simple data exposure, as it can compromise the integrity of development environments and potentially lead to further exploitation opportunities. Attackers who successfully exploit this vulnerability can access sensitive project information, including code repositories, issue tracking data, user credentials, and administrative configuration details. This exposure creates a foundation for more sophisticated attacks such as privilege escalation, data exfiltration, and supply chain compromises. The vulnerability's presence in multiple release streams indicates a systemic issue within the application's security architecture, affecting organizations that may have deployed different versions across their infrastructure. Organizations using affected versions face significant risk of unauthorized access to their source code repositories, which could result in intellectual property theft, compliance violations, and reputational damage. The vulnerability aligns with ATT&CK technique T1083, Information Discovery, as it enables adversaries to gather sensitive information about the target environment.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2018-20495 primarily focus on immediate version updates to patched releases, specifically upgrading to GitLab 11.4.13, 11.5.6, or 11.6.1, which contain the necessary security fixes. Organizations should implement comprehensive vulnerability management procedures to identify and remediate affected systems promptly. Additionally, network segmentation and access control measures should be strengthened to limit exposure of GitLab instances to unauthorized network access. Regular security audits and penetration testing should be conducted to identify similar vulnerabilities within the application stack. Organizations should also implement monitoring solutions to detect unusual access patterns or attempts to exploit information disclosure vulnerabilities. The security community recommends that organizations maintain up-to-date security patches and implement a robust change management process to ensure timely deployment of security fixes. Given the nature of the vulnerability, organizations should also conduct thorough access control reviews and implement principle of least privilege configurations for all GitLab user accounts and administrative functions.