Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-8770

Access Control in Gitlab 18.0.0 – 18.0.6

Published
13 August 2025
Modified
17 June 2026
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:H/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0028 21th percentile
Risk Priority 35 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-8770 is a medium-severity Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key (CWE-639) vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 21th 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-3 (Access Enforcement) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

An issue has been discovered in GitLab EE affecting all versions from 18.0 prior to 18.0.6, 18.1 prior to 18.1.4, and 18.2 prior to 18.2.2 that could have allowed authenticated users with specific access to bypass merge request approval policies…

more

by manipulating approval rule identifiers.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
Why these techniques?

Auth bypass via IDOR in GitLab EE directly enables exploitation of a public-facing application to circumvent access controls.

Confidence: MEDIUM · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-3074Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-1080Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-2104Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-5309Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-0723Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-14594Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-2726Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-6552Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-2601Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-6269Same product: Gitlab Gitlab

Affected Assets

gitlab
gitlab
18.0.0 — 18.0.6 · 18.1.0 — 18.1.4 · 18.2.0 — 18.2.2

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • AC-3 Access Enforcement
  • SI-10 Information Input Validation
  • AC-4 Information Flow Enforcement
Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

prevent

Directly enforces authorization decisions on merge request approval rules so that identifier manipulation cannot bypass required approvals.

prevent

Validates approval-rule identifiers supplied by users, rejecting malformed or unauthorized values that would otherwise allow policy bypass.

prevent

Enforces information-flow rules that require approvals to complete before merge requests can proceed, blocking the CWE-639 bypass path.

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.AA-05 full match
prevents

Enforcing authorization policy and least privilege directly blocks user-controlled key tampering that bypasses access checks.

PR.IR-01 mostly match
prevents

Logical access controls prevent unauthorized data access that results from missing authorization checks on object references.

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.

detects

Security testing can detect missing authorization checks but does not prevent the weakness in production.

prevents

Information access restriction explicitly enforces that users may only retrieve data they are authorized to see, directly addressing user-controlled key bypass.

prevents

Access control policy directly requires enforcement of authorization rules that prevent unauthorized access via manipulated keys.

prevents

Managing access rights includes ensuring users can only access their own records and not bypass authorization by altering identifiers.

mitigates

Privileged access rights control restricts what data each user may access, mitigating direct object reference attacks.

prevents

Secure development lifecycle includes authorization design but does not itself implement runtime access checks.

References