Overview
CVE-2025-13611 describes a low-severity vulnerability affecting GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE). This issue, remediated by GitLab, could potentially allow an authenticated user with access to specific logs to obtain sensitive tokens under certain conditions. This vulnerability impacts GitLab versions from 13.2 before 18.4.5, 18.5 before 18.5.3, and 18.6 before 18.6.1.
Technical Details
The vulnerability stems from insufficient sanitization of sensitive data within GitLab logs. While the exact conditions required for token exposure are not explicitly detailed, the vulnerability description suggests that an authenticated user with appropriate log access privileges could potentially extract tokens. The core issue likely involves the unintentional logging of sensitive values that should have been masked or excluded from log outputs.
Exploitation requires an attacker to:
- Be an authenticated user within the GitLab instance.
- Possess the necessary permissions to access the affected logs.
- Identify the specific log entries where tokens are inadvertently exposed.
CVSS Analysis
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score for CVE-2025-13611 is 2. This indicates a Low severity vulnerability. The low score likely reflects the requirement for authentication, the need for specific log access, and the potentially limited scope of exposed tokens.
Possible Impact
The potential impact of a successful exploitation is the exposure of sensitive tokens. These tokens could potentially be used to impersonate the affected user or to gain unauthorized access to resources secured by the token. The severity is low because successful exploitation depends on specific preconditions, and the scope of impact is likely limited.
Mitigation or Patch Steps
To mitigate this vulnerability, it is crucial to upgrade your GitLab instance to one of the following versions (or later):
- 18.4.5
- 18.5.3
- 18.6.1
GitLab has released patched versions to address this issue. Applying the update is the recommended solution. If immediate upgrading is not possible, consider limiting access to logs and carefully monitoring log data for any signs of unauthorized access or token exposure, though this is not a replacement for patching.
