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CVE-2026-85706: GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition Path Traversal Vulnerability

CVE-2026-85706 is rated critical with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 10.0 and affects GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication, without any user interaction. CISA added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-09-11, which means exploitation in the wild has been observed.

Vulnerability 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.

Severity breakdown

CVSS v3.1 10.0: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

  • 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: Changed. Impact reaches beyond the vulnerable component to other resources.
  • 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: None. No effect on availability.

Underlying weakness

CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory

The product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory.

Affected products

  • GitLab: from 18.7.0 before 18.11.12; from 19.0.0 before 19.0.9; from 19.1.0 before 19.1.8; from 19.2.0 before 19.2.6; from 19.3.0 before 19.3.2

References