CVE-2026-1102
Published: 22 January 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-1102 is a medium-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab. Its CVSS base score is 5.3 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 13.3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-7 (Unsuccessful Logon Attempts) and SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2026-1102 is a vulnerability in GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) that enables an unauthenticated user to trigger a denial of service condition through repeated malformed SSH authentication requests. The issue affects all versions from 12.3 prior to 18.6.4, 18.7 prior to 18.7.2, and 18.8 prior to 18.8.2. It carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.3 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L) and maps to CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling).
Any unauthenticated attacker with network access can exploit this vulnerability by sending repeated malformed SSH authentication requests to the GitLab instance. Successful exploitation results in a denial of service, reducing the availability of the affected system, while confidentiality and integrity remain unaffected.
GitLab has remediated the vulnerability through patch releases, including GitLab 18.8.2, as documented in their release notes at https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2026/01/21/patch-release-gitlab-18-8-2-released/. Further technical details and discussion are available in the associated GitLab issue tracker at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/579746. Security practitioners should prioritize upgrading to the patched versions to mitigate the risk.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-4152
Vulnerability details
GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 12.3 before 18.6.4, 18.7 before 18.7.2, and 18.8 before 18.8.2 that could have allowed an unauthenticated user to create a denial of service condition by sending repeated malformed…
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SSH authentication requests.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Vulnerability in public-facing GitLab enables unauthenticated exploitation via malformed SSH requests to trigger resource exhaustion DoS (CWE-770).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly requires mechanisms to protect against or limit the effects of denial-of-service attacks such as resource exhaustion from repeated malformed SSH requests.
Enforces limits on consecutive unsuccessful SSH authentication attempts, blocking the exact unauthenticated malformed-request flooding vector described in the CVE.
Requires validation of all inputs (including SSH authentication data) to reject malformed requests before they can trigger uncontrolled resource allocation (CWE-770).