CVE-2023-3915

An issue has been discovered in GitLab EE affecting all versions starting from 16.1 before 16.1.5, all versions starting from 16.2 before 16.2.5, all versions starting from 16.3 before 16.3.1. If an external user is given an owner role on any group, that external user may escalate their privileges on the instance by creating a service account in that group. This service account is not classified as external and may be used to access internal projects.

Weakness

While it is executing, the product sets the permissions of an object in a way that violates the intended permissions that have been specified by the user.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
• Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/81.html

References

• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/417664
• https://hackerone.com/reports/2040834
• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/417664
• https://hackerone.com/reports/2040834