Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-9957

Access Control in Gitlab 11.2.0 – 18.9.6

Access Control
Published
22 April 2026
Modified
23 April 2026
Patch / advisory
View advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 2.7
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0038 31th percentile
Risk Priority 15 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-9957 is a low-severity Incorrect Authorization (CWE-863) vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab. Its CVSS base score is 2.7 (Low).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 31th 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 AC-24 (Access Control Decisions) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

A01:2025 Broken Access Control

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 11.2 before 18.9.6, 18.10 before 18.10.4, and 18.11 before 18.11.1 that under certain conditions could have allowed an authenticated user with project owner permissions to bypass group fork…

more

prevention settings due to improper authorization checks.

CWE(s)
CWE-863

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.
attack.mitre.org →
T1213.003 Code Repositories Collection
Adversaries may leverage code repositories to collect valuable information.
attack.mitre.org →
Why these techniques?

Authorization bypass in GitLab enables exploitation of the public-facing app (T1190) and unauthorized collection from code repositories via disallowed forks (T1213.003).

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

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-3553Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-6713Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-2726Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-6269Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-7736Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-9807Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-5377Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-5796Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-13928Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-5952Same product: Gitlab Gitlab

Affected Assets

gitlab
gitlab
18.11.0 · 11.2.0 — 18.9.6 · 11.2.0 — 18.9.6 · 18.10.0 — 18.10.4

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • AC-3 Access Enforcement
  • AC-4 Information Flow Enforcement
  • AC-24 Access Control Decisions
Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

—

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

—

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

AC-3 Access Enforcement good match
prevent

Directly enforces authorization policies on fork operations, blocking the improper bypass of group fork-prevention settings by project owners.

AC-4 Information Flow Enforcement partial match
prevent

Enforces information-flow rules that would stop unauthorized project forking across group boundaries when group settings prohibit it.

AC-24 Access Control Decisions partial match
prevent

Ensures access-control decisions for fork actions correctly incorporate group-level prevention policies rather than only project-owner permissions.

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 mostly match
prevents

Defining, enforcing, and reviewing access authorizations and least privilege directly prevents incorrect authorization checks.

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.5.15 Access control partial match
prevents

Requiring consistency between access rights and classification plus formal approval steps ensures that the authorization logic correctly distinguishes between entities that should and should not be granted access.

A.5.18 Access rights partial match
prevents

Enforcing policy-driven approval and role-change reviews stops incorrect or stale authorization decisions from remaining in effect after job changes or terminations.

A.8.3 Information access restriction partial match
prevents

By tying access rights to identity, device, location and classification, the control reduces the likelihood that an authorization decision will be based on an incorrect or bypassed policy.

References