Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-5309

Access Control in Gitlab 18.6.0 – 18.11.6

Published
25 June 2026
Modified
26 June 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 5.4
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0017 7th percentile
Risk Priority 35 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-5309 is a medium-severity Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key (CWE-639) vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab. Its CVSS base score is 5.4 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Code Repositories (T1213.003); ranked at the 7th 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-6 (Least Privilege) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab EE affecting all versions from 18.6 before 18.11.6, 19.0 before 19.0.3, and 19.1 before 19.1.1 that under certain conditions could have allowed an authenticated user to read or modify another group's virtual registry…

more

cleanup policy settings without authorization.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1213.003 Code Repositories Collection
Adversaries may leverage code repositories to collect valuable information.
T1484.001 Group Policy Modification Defense Impairment
Adversaries may modify Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to subvert the intended discretionary access controls for a domain, usually with the intention of escalating privileges on the domain.
Why these techniques?

Authorization bypass enables unauthorized read/modify of group settings in GitLab code repository platform, directly facilitating data access from code repos and tenant/group policy changes.

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

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-2104Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-14594Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-6552Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-1338Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-5195Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-8770Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-3073Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-11247Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-3074Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-13874Same product: Gitlab Gitlab

Affected Assets

gitlab
gitlab
19.1.0 · 18.6.0 — 18.11.6 · 19.0.0 — 19.0.3

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • AC-3 Access Enforcement
  • AC-6 Least Privilege
  • 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 checks so an authenticated user cannot read or modify another group's virtual registry cleanup policy settings.

prevent

Limits privileges to only those required for a user's own group, blocking unauthorized cross-group access to cleanup policies.

prevent

Enforces information-flow rules between security domains (groups), preventing unauthorized reads or writes of another group's registry policy objects.

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