CVE-2019-10117 in Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE
An Open Redirect issue was discovered in GitLab Community and Enterprise Edition before 11.7.8, 11.8.x before 11.8.4, and 11.9.x before 11.9.2. A redirect is triggered after successful authentication within the Oauth/:GeoAuthController for the secondary Geo node.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/21/2023
The vulnerability CVE-2019-10117 represents a critical open redirect flaw in GitLab's authentication system that affects multiple versions of both Community and Enterprise editions. This security weakness resides within the OAuth authentication flow specifically in the GeoAuthController component responsible for handling secondary Geo node authentication processes. The flaw allows attackers to manipulate the redirect behavior after successful authentication, potentially enabling malicious redirection attacks that could compromise user sessions and facilitate various forms of social engineering.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate input validation and sanitization within the OAuth redirect parameter handling mechanism. When users authenticate through the OAuth system for Geo node operations, the application fails to properly validate the redirect URL parameter, allowing attackers to inject malicious URLs that could redirect users to phishing sites or other malicious destinations. This issue falls under the CWE-601 vulnerability category, which specifically addresses open redirect flaws where applications redirect users to untrusted domains without proper validation. The flaw operates at the application layer, specifically within the authentication and session management components, making it particularly dangerous as it can be exploited during legitimate authentication flows.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple redirection attacks, as it creates opportunities for credential theft, session hijacking, and phishing campaigns that could target both administrators and regular users within GitLab environments. Attackers could craft malicious URLs that appear legitimate to users but redirect them to attacker-controlled domains, potentially harvesting credentials or deploying malware. This vulnerability particularly affects organizations using GitLab's Geo replication features, where secondary nodes require authentication and redirect functionality. The attack surface is amplified in enterprise environments where multiple users authenticate through OAuth systems, making it a significant concern for organizations that rely on GitLab for version control and collaboration.
Organizations should immediately apply the relevant security patches for GitLab versions 11.7.8, 11.8.4, and 11.9.2 to remediate this vulnerability. The mitigation strategy should include comprehensive input validation for all redirect parameters and implementation of a whitelist approach for allowed redirect domains. Security teams should also monitor authentication logs for suspicious redirect patterns and consider implementing additional security controls such as multi-factor authentication to reduce the impact of potential exploitation. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to T1566 (Phishing) and T1078 (Valid Accounts) techniques, as it can be used to establish persistent access through credential theft. Organizations should also review their OAuth configurations and ensure proper domain validation is implemented across all authentication flows to prevent similar issues in other components of their GitLab infrastructure.