CVE-2024-7803 is a medium-severity vulnerability affecting GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) versions from 11.6 up to but not including 17.10.7, 17.11 up to 17.11.3, and 18.0 up to 18.0.1. The vulnerability is categorized under CWE-770, which involves the allocation of resources without limits or throttling, leading to potential denial-of-service (DoS) conditions. Specifically, the issue arises from the Discord webhook integration feature in GitLab. When this integration is used, an attacker can exploit the lack of proper resource management to overwhelm the system, causing service disruption. The CVSS 3.1 base score is 6.5, indicating a medium severity level, with the vector indicating network attack vector (AV:N), low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring low privileges (PR:L), no user interaction (UI:N), unchanged scope (S:U), no impact on confidentiality or integrity (C:N/I:N), but high impact on availability (A:H). No known exploits are currently reported in the wild, and no official patches are linked yet, though affected versions are clearly identified. The vulnerability does not require user interaction but does require some level of authenticated access (low privileges), which means an attacker must have some access to the GitLab instance to exploit the flaw. The root cause is the absence of throttling or limits on resource allocation when processing Discord webhook events, which can be abused to consume excessive system resources and cause denial of service.

For European organizations using GitLab CE or EE, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to service availability. GitLab is widely used across Europe for source code management, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps workflows. A successful exploitation could disrupt development operations, delay software releases, and impact business continuity. Since the vulnerability affects availability without compromising confidentiality or integrity, the primary concern is operational disruption. Organizations relying heavily on GitLab for critical development and deployment pipelines could face downtime or degraded performance, potentially affecting multiple teams and projects. The requirement for low-level privileges means insider threats or compromised accounts could exploit this vulnerability. Additionally, the lack of user interaction requirement facilitates automated exploitation attempts once access is gained. This could be particularly impactful for large enterprises and public sector organizations in Europe that depend on GitLab for secure and reliable software development processes.

European organizations should prioritize upgrading GitLab instances to versions 17.10.7, 17.11.3, 18.0.1 or later, where this vulnerability is addressed. Until patches are applied, organizations should restrict access to GitLab webhook configuration features to trusted administrators only, minimizing the risk of exploitation by low-privilege users. Monitoring and alerting on unusual webhook activity or resource consumption spikes can help detect exploitation attempts early. Implementing network-level controls to limit outbound connections to Discord webhook endpoints may reduce the attack surface. Additionally, organizations should review and tighten authentication and authorization policies to ensure that only necessary users have permissions to configure or trigger webhooks. Employing rate limiting or resource throttling at the application or infrastructure level, if possible, can mitigate the impact of resource exhaustion. Finally, maintaining robust incident response plans to quickly address potential DoS incidents will help minimize operational disruption.