Overview
CVE-2025-7449 is a medium severity Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability affecting GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE). This vulnerability impacts versions from 8.3 before 18.4.5, 18.5 before 18.5.3, and 18.6 before 18.6.1. An authenticated user with specific permissions can exploit this vulnerability to cause a DoS condition through malicious HTTP response processing. It is crucial to upgrade your GitLab instance to a patched version to mitigate this risk.
Technical Details
The vulnerability stems from how GitLab handles HTTP responses. An authenticated user, possessing the necessary privileges (the specifics of which are not fully detailed in the public disclosure, but likely relate to project interaction or API access), can craft a malicious HTTP request that triggers an exploitable condition within GitLab’s HTTP response processing logic. This malformed response, when processed, leads to excessive resource consumption, ultimately resulting in a denial-of-service state. The specific mechanism by which the malicious response triggers the DoS isn’t explicitly detailed in the vulnerability description, requiring further in-depth analysis or exploit research for a comprehensive understanding.
CVSS Analysis
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score for CVE-2025-7449 is 6.5 (MEDIUM).
Possible Impact
A successful exploitation of CVE-2025-7449 can lead to the following:
- Denial of Service: GitLab instance becomes unresponsive or unavailable to legitimate users, disrupting development workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
- Resource Exhaustion: Server resources (CPU, memory, disk I/O) are consumed, potentially impacting other services running on the same infrastructure.
Mitigation and Patch Steps
To mitigate CVE-2025-7449, upgrade your GitLab instance to one of the following versions or later:
- 18.4.5
- 18.5.3
- 18.6.1
Follow the official GitLab upgrade documentation to ensure a smooth and secure update process. Regularly checking GitLab’s security release announcements is also recommended.
References
- CVE ID: CVE-2025-7449
- GitLab Issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/554938
- HackerOne Report: https://hackerone.com/reports/3215054
