CVE-2022-2243 in Enterprise Edition
Summary
by MITRE • 07/01/2022
An access control vulnerability in GitLab EE/CE affecting all versions from 14.8 prior to 14.10.5, 15.0 prior to 15.0.4, and 15.1 prior to 15.1.1, allows authenticated users to enumerate issues in non-linked sentry projects.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/18/2022
This vulnerability represents a critical access control flaw in GitLab's issue tracking system that enables authenticated users to bypass intended security boundaries. The issue affects both GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition across multiple version ranges, specifically targeting versions prior to the mentioned patches. The vulnerability stems from insufficient authorization checks when accessing issue data, allowing users to enumerate issues within projects that are not directly linked to their own projects through the sentry integration. This represents a direct violation of the principle of least privilege and could enable unauthorized information disclosure.
The technical implementation of this flaw involves the application's failure to properly validate user permissions when processing requests for issue enumeration within the sentry integration context. When users access issue data through the sentry project linking functionality, the system should verify that the requesting user has appropriate access rights to the target project. However, the vulnerability allows authenticated users to craft requests that bypass these authorization checks, enabling them to discover and enumerate issues from projects they should not normally have access to. This type of vulnerability is classified as a privilege escalation issue under CWE-284 which specifically addresses improper access control mechanisms.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple information disclosure, as it provides attackers with valuable intelligence about project structures, issue types, and potentially sensitive information contained within the enumerated issues. An attacker could use this information to plan more targeted attacks against specific projects, identify potential security gaps, or gather intelligence about development processes and team activities. The vulnerability affects the core GitLab functionality that manages project access control and issue tracking, making it particularly dangerous in environments where multiple teams collaborate on shared code repositories. This flaw could be exploited to map out project dependencies, identify critical issues, or discover sensitive data that should remain private to authorized team members.
Organizations using affected GitLab versions should immediately apply the patched releases to mitigate this vulnerability. The recommended mitigation strategy includes updating to GitLab versions 14.10.5, 15.0.4, or 15.1.1 depending on the current installation. Additionally, administrators should review existing user permissions and project access controls to ensure that unauthorized access to sensitive project data is properly restricted. Monitoring for unusual access patterns or enumeration attempts should be implemented as part of the security operations routine. This vulnerability aligns with ATT&CK technique T1213.002 which involves data from information repositories, and represents a classic example of how insufficient access controls can lead to unauthorized data discovery and potential compromise of sensitive project information. The flaw demonstrates the critical importance of proper input validation and authorization checking in multi-tenant applications where users may have varying levels of access rights to different project resources.