CVE-2022-2908 is a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability affecting GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) versions starting from 10.7 up to versions prior to 15.1.5, as well as versions from 15.2 up to before 15.2.3, and versions from 15.3 up to before 15.3.1. The vulnerability arises due to uncontrolled resource consumption triggered by specially crafted input in the Commit message field. An attacker with at least low-level privileges (PR:L) can submit a commit message containing maliciously crafted content that causes GitLab to consume excessive CPU resources, leading to high CPU usage and potential service degradation or denial of service. The vulnerability does not impact confidentiality or integrity but affects availability by exhausting CPU resources. Exploitation does not require user interaction (UI:N) and can be performed remotely (AV:N) over the network. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 4.3, indicating a medium severity level. The underlying weakness is categorized under CWE-1333, which relates to uncontrolled resource consumption. No known exploits have been reported in the wild as of the published date. The vulnerability affects multiple GitLab versions, highlighting the need for patching or mitigation in affected deployments. Since GitLab is widely used for source code management and CI/CD pipelines, this vulnerability could disrupt development workflows if exploited.

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2022-2908 can be significant, especially for those relying heavily on GitLab for software development and DevOps processes. A successful exploitation could lead to denial of service conditions, causing downtime or degraded performance of GitLab services. This disruption can delay development cycles, impact continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, and reduce productivity. Organizations with large development teams or critical software projects hosted on GitLab may experience operational bottlenecks. While the vulnerability does not expose sensitive data or allow unauthorized code execution, the availability impact can indirectly affect business continuity and project delivery timelines. Additionally, organizations in regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare, or critical infrastructure may face compliance risks if service interruptions affect their operational requirements. Given the remote exploitability and lack of user interaction needed, attackers could automate attacks to cause widespread disruption if the vulnerability is left unpatched.

European organizations should prioritize upgrading affected GitLab instances to the fixed versions: 15.1.5 or later for versions prior to 15.1.5, 15.2.3 or later for versions in the 15.2 series, and 15.3.1 or later for versions in the 15.3 series. If immediate patching is not feasible, organizations should implement strict access controls to limit commit permissions to trusted users only, reducing the risk of malicious commit messages. Monitoring CPU usage and setting resource usage alerts on GitLab servers can help detect abnormal spikes indicative of exploitation attempts. Additionally, rate limiting commit submissions and employing Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) with rules to detect and block suspicious commit message payloads may mitigate exploitation risk. Regularly reviewing GitLab logs for unusual commit activity and integrating vulnerability management processes to track and apply security updates promptly will further reduce exposure. Finally, organizations should ensure that their incident response plans include scenarios for DoS attacks on development infrastructure to minimize downtime.