GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition: file access flaw under attack

What is affected

GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition is mostly run by companies, schools and public bodies, not on home computers. You are unlikely to have it yourself, but organisations that hold your data may. Breaches that start with flaws like this one are how personal data ends up leaked.

GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition contains a path traversal vulnerability that allows an unauthenticated user to read arbitrary files due to an improper path confinement and missing authentication enforcement in the repository commits API.

What an attacker can do

This is a file access flaw. It lets an attacker read or write files they should never reach, such as configuration files that hold passwords, or upload a malicious file that the system then runs.

How it is reached

Over the internet or network

Access the attacker needs

No account needed

Does the victim have to do something?

No, works without the victim doing anything

What to do

1. At home: nothing to install. Keep your own devices updated and use a different password for every service, so that a breach at one organisation does not open your other accounts.
2. If you administer GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition at work: apply the vendor's fix or mitigation now and review logs for signs of compromise, because the flaw was being exploited before it was listed.
3. If the product is past its support date and no fix exists, take it off the internet or retire it.

Apply mitigations in accordance with vendor instructions, ensuring compliance with CISA’s BOD 26-04 Prioritizing Security Updates Based on Risk (see URL in Notes) guidance and CISA’s “Forensics Triage Requirements” (see URL in Notes). Follow applicable BOD 26-04 guidance for cloud services or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable. Stakeholders are responsible for evaluating each asset's internet exposure and ensuring adherence to BOD 26-04 patching guidelines.

Vendor advisories and fixes

• docs.gitlab.comdocs.gitlab.com/releases/patches/patch-release-gitlab-19-3-2-released/

How urgent is it

CISA added this vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalogue on September 11, 2026, which means there is reliable evidence of attacks in the wild. US federal agencies must fix it by September 14, 2026, a deadline that has already passed. That deadline does not bind anyone else, but it shows how seriously the agency rates it.

The EPSS model estimates a 93% probability that this flaw will be exploited somewhere in the next 30 days. That is higher than 99.8% of all scored vulnerabilities.

Its CVSS severity score is 10.0 out of 10 (critical), as recorded in the US National Vulnerability Database.

Technical description

GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 18.7 before 18.11.12, 19.0 before 19.0.9, 19.1 before 19.1.8, 19.2 before 19.2.6, and 19.3 before 19.3.2 that, under certain conditions, an unauthenticated user could have read arbitrary files from the GitLab server due to improper path confinement and missing authentication enforcement in the repository commits API.