Cyber Resilience

CVE-2024-2651

Gitlab ≤ 16.9.7

Published
14 May 2024
Modified
12 December 2024
CVSS Score v3.1 6.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.33 98th percentile
Risk Priority 66 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2024-2651 is a medium-severity Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity (CWE-1333) vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked in the top 2% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary

Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.

An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions before 16.9.7, all versions starting from 16.10 before 16.10.5, and all versions starting from 16.11 before 16.11.2. The vulnerability permits an attacker to trigger a denial of service through specially crafted markdown content and carries a CVSS 3.1 score of 6.5 with a high impact on availability.

An authenticated user with low privileges can submit the malicious markdown over the network, causing the application to become unavailable without requiring user interaction or elevated access. The weakness is tracked under CWE-1333.

Public advisories and the associated GitLab and HackerOne reports direct administrators to apply the fixed releases 16.9.7, 16.10.5, or 16.11.2. The EPSS score rose from a low baseline to a peak of 0.0761 before receding, indicating a period of increased exploitation interest after disclosure.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions before 16.9.7, all versions starting from 16.10 before 16.10.5, all versions starting from 16.11 before 16.11.2. It was possible for an attacker to cause a denial of service using…

more

maliciously crafted markdown content.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.003 Application Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-6688Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-3994Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2024-2829Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-6682Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-3424Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-2198Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-3909Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2024-4025Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2024-1495Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-3364Same product: Gitlab Gitlab

Affected Assets

gitlab
gitlab
≤ 16.9.7 · ≤ 16.9.7 · 16.10.0 — 16.10.5

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation can discover inefficient regex patterns via performance or static analysis.

Development standards and tools can require safe regex construction and forbid known exponential patterns.

Denial-of-service protections limit resource exhaustion caused by expensive regex evaluation.

Input validation can constrain data that would otherwise trigger worst-case regex complexity.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly prevent inefficient regex via reviews, static analysis, and safe libraries.

ID.RA-01 partial match
prevents

Vulnerability identification processes can discover ReDoS issues in existing code but do not stop their introduction.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

finds

Security testing can detect and reject regex patterns with exponential worst-case complexity.

prevents

Secure development lifecycle mandates review of algorithmic efficiency, directly addressing ReDoS-prone regex.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify input-validation rules that limit regex complexity.

prevents

Secure architecture principles encourage avoidance of computationally expensive constructs such as catastrophic backtracking.

prevents

Secure coding standards explicitly prohibit or limit the use of inefficient regular expressions.

References