Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HSummary
CVE-2024-2878 is a high-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Network Denial of Service (T1498); ranked in the top 3% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-10 (Concurrent Session Control) and SC-6 (Resource Availability) — 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.
CVE-2024-2878 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE), affecting all versions starting from 15.7 prior to 16.9.7, starting from 16.10 prior to 16.10.5, and starting from 16.11 prior to 16.11.2. The issue allows an attacker to trigger excessive resource consumption by crafting unusual search terms for branch names, classified under CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling). It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H), indicating high severity due to its network accessibility and lack of required privileges.
An unauthenticated attacker (PR:N) can exploit this vulnerability remotely over the network (AV:N) with low complexity (AC:L) and no user interaction (UI:N). By submitting specially crafted search queries for branch names, the attacker causes GitLab to allocate excessive resources, leading to a denial of service (A:H) that disrupts service availability without impacting confidentiality or integrity.
GitLab addressed the vulnerability in patch releases, including version 16.11.2, as detailed in the release notes. Administrators should upgrade to GitLab 16.9.7 or later, 16.10.5 or later, or 16.11.2 or later to mitigate the issue. Further details are available in the GitLab issue tracker (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/451918) and the associated HackerOne report (https://hackerone.com/reports/2416356).
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-27822
Vulnerability Data
An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions starting from 15.7 prior to 16.9.7, starting from 16.10 prior to 16.10.5, and starting from 16.11 prior to 16.11.2. It was possible for an attacker to cause a denial…
more
of service by crafting unusual search terms for branch names.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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- 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
V15.4.4
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly enforces a hard limit on concurrent sessions, structurally preventing unbounded resource allocation.
Requires explicit allocation of resources by priority or quota, directly stopping unlimited allocation.
Imposes a limit on consecutive invalid attempts, preventing one specific class of unbounded resource consumption.
Reduces impact of resulting DoS events without preventing the underlying lack of allocation limits.
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.
Monitoring capacity and taking action to maintain availability directly reduces unchecked resource allocation.
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.
Baseline comparison of CPU, memory and bandwidth usage helps surface uncontrolled resource allocations before they cause service degradation.
Capacity projections and elasticity measures ensure that allocation requests are bounded and can be throttled, reducing the window in which an attacker can force unbounded resource reservations.
Defining retention periods and deletion schedules for backup copies prevents indefinite accumulation of data on storage media without corresponding resource-management controls.
Architectural redundancy and automatic failover limit the impact of an attacker who forces excessive allocations, because spare capacity can absorb the load until the primary instance recovers.
Documented incident response procedures that include activation of continuity plans and controlled recovery help ensure that resource consumption triggered by an incident is bounded and managed rather than left unbounded.
Mandating tested continuity procedures that preserve or replace resource-limiting controls prevents an attacker from exploiting the absence of throttling mechanisms during an outage.
Hardening callouts derived
Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).
Oracle Linux 8 (2 rules)
- V-248552 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
- V-248553 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
Oracle Linux 9 (2 rules)
- V-271710 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
- V-271709 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
RHEL 8 (1 rule)
- V-230244 RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770