Quantum Secular Labs / Blog / Advisories

CVE-2021-22175: GitLab Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) Vulnerability

CVE-2021-22175 is rated critical with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 and affects GitLab GitLab. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication, without any user interaction. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available. CISA added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-02-18, which means exploitation in the wild has been observed.

Vulnerability description

When requests to the internal network for webhooks are enabled, a server-side request forgery vulnerability in GitLab affecting all versions starting from 10.5 was possible to exploit for an unauthenticated attacker even on a GitLab instance where registration is disabled

Severity breakdown

CVSS v3.1 9.8: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

  • Attack vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network, with no need for local or physical access.
  • Attack complexity: Low. No special conditions; the attack can be repeated reliably.
  • Privileges required: None. No account or prior access is needed.
  • User interaction: None. No action from any user is needed.
  • Scope: Unchanged. Impact stays within the vulnerable component.
  • Confidentiality impact: High. Total loss of confidentiality; sensitive data can be fully disclosed.
  • Integrity impact: High. Total loss of integrity; data or system state can be fully modified.
  • Availability impact: High. Total loss of availability; the component can be shut down.

Underlying weakness

CWE-918: Server-Side Request Forgery

The web server receives a URL or similar request from an upstream component and retrieves the contents of this URL, but it does not sufficiently ensure that the request is being sent to the expected destination.

Affected products

  • GitLab: from 10.5.0 before 13.6.7; from 13.7.0 before 13.7.7; from 13.8.0 before 13.8.4

References