CVE-2022-3060 is a high-severity vulnerability affecting GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) versions from 12.7 up to certain patched releases before 15.4.1. The issue stems from improper control of resource identifiers within the Error Tracking feature of GitLab. Specifically, this vulnerability is categorized under CWE-22, which relates to improper handling of resource paths or identifiers, often leading to resource injection or path traversal issues. An authenticated attacker with at least limited privileges (PR:L) can exploit this flaw by crafting malicious content that causes a victim user to make unintended arbitrary requests. These requests could potentially lead to unauthorized access or manipulation of internal resources, as the vulnerability allows injection of resource identifiers that are not properly validated or sanitized. The CVSS v3.1 score of 7.3 reflects a high severity, with network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring privileges (PR:L) and user interaction (UI:R). The impact on confidentiality and integrity is high, while availability is not affected. Although no known exploits have been reported in the wild, the vulnerability poses a significant risk due to the widespread use of GitLab for source code management and DevOps pipelines. Attackers leveraging this vulnerability could cause victims to unknowingly perform actions that compromise sensitive data or internal systems, potentially leading to further lateral movement or data exfiltration within an organization’s infrastructure.

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2022-3060 can be substantial given GitLab's popularity as a DevOps platform across various industries including finance, manufacturing, technology, and government sectors. Exploitation could lead to unauthorized access to source code repositories, internal APIs, or other sensitive resources, undermining intellectual property confidentiality and integrity of software development processes. This could result in compromised software builds, introduction of malicious code, or leakage of sensitive project information. Additionally, the exploitation requiring user interaction means social engineering or phishing could be used to trick legitimate users into triggering the vulnerability, increasing the risk of successful attacks. The disruption of development workflows and potential data breaches could have regulatory implications under GDPR and other European data protection laws, leading to financial penalties and reputational damage. Organizations relying on GitLab for CI/CD pipelines may face operational delays or compromised software delivery integrity, impacting business continuity and customer trust.

To mitigate CVE-2022-3060, European organizations should promptly upgrade affected GitLab instances to the latest patched versions beyond 15.4.1, 15.3.4, or 15.2.5 depending on their current version. Since no official patch links were provided in the source, organizations should monitor GitLab’s official security advisories and apply updates as soon as they are available. In addition to patching, organizations should implement strict access controls and least privilege principles to limit the number of users with permissions to interact with the Error Tracking feature. Employing multi-factor authentication (MFA) can reduce the risk of compromised credentials being used to exploit this vulnerability. Security teams should also monitor logs for unusual or unexpected requests triggered by user interactions that could indicate exploitation attempts. User awareness training focused on phishing and social engineering risks is critical since exploitation requires user interaction. Finally, organizations should consider isolating GitLab instances within segmented network zones and applying web application firewalls (WAF) with custom rules to detect and block suspicious resource identifier injection patterns.