CVE-2022-2527 in Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE • 10/17/2022
An issue in Incident Timelines has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions starting from 14.9 before 15.1.6, all versions starting from 15.2 before 15.2.4, all versions starting from 15.3 before 15.3.2.which allowed an authenticated attacker to inject arbitrary content. A victim interacting with this content could lead to arbitrary requests.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/26/2026
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2022-2527 represents a critical security flaw within GitLab's Incident Timelines feature that affects multiple version ranges across the platform's community and enterprise editions. This issue stems from insufficient input validation and sanitization mechanisms within the timeline rendering system, creating a potential vector for malicious content injection that could be exploited by authenticated attackers with access to affected GitLab instances. The vulnerability specifically impacts versions beginning with 14.9 through 15.1.5, 15.2 through 15.2.3, and 15.3 through 15.3.1, making it a widespread concern across several major release cycles.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability involves a failure in proper content sanitization within the incident timeline component where user-supplied data is not adequately filtered or escaped before being rendered in the web interface. This allows an authenticated attacker to inject malicious content that gets processed and displayed to other users who interact with the timeline. The flaw essentially creates a cross-site scripting vulnerability where the injected content can execute within the context of the victim's browser session, potentially enabling attackers to perform actions on behalf of legitimate users. The vulnerability operates at the application layer and leverages the trust relationship between the GitLab platform and its authenticated users, making it particularly dangerous in environments where multiple users collaborate on incident response activities.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data corruption or display issues, as it creates a persistent threat vector that could be exploited to escalate privileges, access sensitive information, or perform unauthorized actions within the GitLab environment. When victims interact with the maliciously injected content, the vulnerability can trigger arbitrary requests to external systems, potentially enabling attackers to exfiltrate data, redirect users to malicious sites, or establish command and control channels. The exploitation requires an authenticated user session, but once achieved, the attacker can manipulate the timeline content to affect all users who view the affected timeline, creating a potential for widespread impact within organizations that rely heavily on GitLab for incident management and collaboration.
Organizations should immediately implement mitigations including updating to the patched versions 15.1.6, 15.2.4, and 15.3.2 respectively, while also considering temporary workarounds such as restricting user permissions for timeline editing capabilities. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-79, which addresses cross-site scripting flaws, and maps to ATT&CK techniques involving command and control communications and privilege escalation through web application vulnerabilities. Security teams should monitor for suspicious timeline modifications and implement network-level protections to detect and block malicious requests originating from affected GitLab instances. Additionally, regular security assessments of GitLab configurations and user access controls should be conducted to minimize the attack surface and ensure comprehensive protection against similar vulnerabilities in other components of the platform.