Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-4979

Gitlab ≤ 17.10.7

Published
22 May 2025
Modified
17 June 2026
CVSS Score v3.1 4.9
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0042 35th percentile
Risk Priority 39 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-4979 is a medium-severity Insufficient Granularity of Access Control (CWE-1220) vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab. Its CVSS base score is 4.9 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Services File Permissions Weakness (T1574.010); ranked at the 35th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-24 (Access Control Decisions) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions before 17.10.7, 17.11 before 17.11.3, and 18.0 before 18.0.1. An attacker may be able to reveal masked or hidden CI variables (that they did not author) in the WebUI,…

more

by simply creating their own variable and observing the HTTP response.

CWE(s)
CWE-1220NVD-CWE-noinfo

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1574.010 Services File Permissions Weakness Stealth
Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by hijacking the binaries used by services.
attack.mitre.org →
T1078 Valid Accounts Stealth
Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of existing accounts as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion.
attack.mitre.org →
T1548 Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may circumvent mechanisms designed to control privilege elevation to gain higher-level permissions.
attack.mitre.org →
T1556 Modify Authentication Process Defense Impairment
Adversaries may modify authentication mechanisms and processes to access user credentials or enable otherwise unwarranted access to accounts.
attack.mitre.org →
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2025-1278Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2024-12619Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-2408Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-5982Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-11246Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2024-11931Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-7001Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-2498Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-1110Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-6477Same product: Gitlab Gitlab

Affected Assets

gitlab
gitlab
18.0.0 · ≤ 17.10.7 · ≤ 17.10.7 · 17.11.0 — 17.11.3

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

—

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

—

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 4 hardening rules · 4 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V16.4.2
  • V8.4.2
  • V11.7.1
  • V13.2.4

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

AC-6 Least Privilege good match

Least privilege explicitly demands that only the minimum necessary accesses are granted, eliminating the broad permissions that define this weakness.

AC-24 Access Control Decisions good match

AC-24 requires access decisions to be applied precisely and unambiguously to every request, structurally blocking insufficiently granular policies.

AC-3 Access Enforcement good match

AC-3 requires enforcement of authorizations according to policy, directly compelling sufficiently granular rules so broad allowances cannot be introduced.

AC-4 Information Flow Enforcement partial match

AC-4 enforces approved information flows with explicit source/destination rules, preventing overly coarse access policies from being deployed.

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.IR-01 mostly match
prevents

PR.IR-01's segmentation + zero-trust rules directly enforce minimum-necessary access at network boundaries, removing most instances of overly broad policy; CWE-1220 can still exist in application-layer or intra-segment controls that this single outcome does not address.

PR.PS-06 partial match
prevents

PR.PS-06's general SDLC practices can surface granularity issues during design/review (partial prevention) but do not specifically target access-control policy breadth, so they remove only part of CWE-1220's risk.

DE.AE-06 none match
degrades

CWE-1220 permits unauthorized access to sensitive assets but neither prevents nor impairs the delivery of adverse-event information to authorized recipients.

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.

A.8.3 Information access restriction mostly match
degrades

Directly requires information-access restriction at the level of individual assets and operations, addressing the granularity gap.

A.5.15 Access control partial match
prevents

Establishes the overarching access-control policy whose granularity directly determines whether the weakness exists.

A.5.18 Access rights partial match
prevents

Defines the assignment and review of access rights; insufficient granularity in those rights is the root of CWE-1220.

A.8.2 Privileged access rights partial match
prevents

Specifies management of privileged access rights, where overly broad privileges are a common manifestation of the weakness.

A.8.18 Use of privileged utility programs none match
none

Limits use of privileged utilities; overly coarse access rules can still allow unauthorized utility access.

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).

Windows Server 2016 (1 rule)
  • V-225025 Local accounts with blank passwords must be restricted to prevent access from the network. prevents CWE-1220
Windows Server 2022 (1 rule)
  • V-254446 Windows Server 2022 must prevent local accounts with blank passwords from being used from the network. prevents CWE-1220

References