CVE-2022-1121 in Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE • 04/05/2022
A lack of appropriate timeouts in GitLab Pages included in GitLab CE/EE all versions prior to 14.7.7, 14.8 prior to 14.8.5, and 14.9 prior to 14.9.2 allows an attacker to cause unlimited resource consumption.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 04/06/2022
This vulnerability affects GitLab Pages functionality within GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition versions prior to specific patch releases. The issue stems from insufficient timeout mechanisms that govern resource allocation and processing time limits for pages serving operations. When attackers exploit this weakness, they can manipulate the system to consume unlimited computational resources without proper time constraints, leading to potential denial of service conditions that impact legitimate users and system performance. The vulnerability exists across multiple version branches including 14.7.7, 14.8.5, and 14.9.2, indicating a widespread exposure that affects various GitLab installations.
The technical flaw manifests as a lack of proper timeout controls in the GitLab Pages component, which is designed to serve static content for projects hosted within the GitLab environment. Without appropriate time limits on resource allocation, attackers can submit malicious requests or craft specific page configurations that cause the system to continuously process requests without termination. This behavior leads to resource exhaustion where CPU cycles, memory allocation, and network bandwidth become consumed indefinitely, potentially causing system instability and service disruption. The absence of timeout mechanisms creates an environment where resource consumption grows without bounds, making the system vulnerable to resource exhaustion attacks that align with common denial of service patterns.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption to encompass broader security implications for GitLab installations. Organizations running affected versions experience increased risk of system downtime, degraded performance for legitimate users, and potential compromise of the overall platform availability. Attackers can leverage this weakness to conduct resource exhaustion attacks that may not require sophisticated techniques but can effectively overwhelm system resources. The vulnerability particularly affects environments where GitLab Pages serves as a critical component for project documentation, static website hosting, or other content delivery functions, making it a significant concern for development teams and DevOps operations that rely on continuous availability.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability include immediate upgrade to patched versions of GitLab CE/EE, specifically versions 14.7.7, 14.8.5, and 14.9.2, which implement proper timeout controls for GitLab Pages operations. Organizations should also consider implementing additional monitoring and rate-limiting measures to detect and prevent abnormal resource consumption patterns. System administrators should review existing timeout configurations and establish proper resource limits for page serving operations to prevent similar issues. This vulnerability relates to CWE-778 which addresses insufficient logging of resource usage, and aligns with ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for network denial of service attacks. Security teams should conduct comprehensive testing of patched versions to ensure that timeout mechanisms function correctly and that no additional resource management issues exist within the GitLab Pages implementation.