CISA Says Bastards Are Actively Exploiting a Max-Severity GitLab Flaw. Lovely.
Right, here’s the shitshow: CISA has added a maximum-severity GitLab vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, which is bureaucrat-speak for “yes, you lazy sods, attackers are already using this in the wild, so maybe stop ignoring your patch queue for five bloody minutes.”
The flaw in question is CVE-2023-7028, a nasty account takever bug with a CVSS score of 10.0, which is about as bad as it gets before someone sets the server room on fire. The bug lets attackers abuse the password reset mechanism so a reset email can be sent to an unverified email address they control. Translation: if they can pull it off, they can hijack accounts without needing your password, your MFA token, or your permission. Convenient for them, shit for you.
GitLab fixed the damn thing back in January 2024 for multiple Community Edition and Enterprise Edition versions. The patched releases include 16.5.6, 16.6.4, and 16.7.2, with later versions obviously not being stupid enough to keep the flaw around. If you’re still running vulnerable versions because “change management” is hard, congratulations on volunteering your infrastructure as a public bug bounty target.
CISA’s order applies specifically to U.S. federal civilian agencies under Binding Operational Directive 22-01, meaning they’ve been given a deadline to patch the bloody thing or otherwise mitigate it. And while the order is aimed at government agencies, let’s not pretend the rest of the planet gets a magical exemption. If criminals are exploiting it against one lot of victims, they’ll happily have a go at everyone else too. That’s how this miserable industry works.
The article points out that this isn’t some hypothetical lab demo for security nerds to clap at on LinkedIn. Exploitation is active. Real attackers. Real systems. Real admins somewhere currently sweating through their shirts while pretending the outage is “under investigation.” If your GitLab instance is internet-exposed and unpatched, you’re basically standing in traffic wearing a sign that says, “Please rob me efficiently.”
So here’s the summary for the chronically distracted: patch GitLab now, especially if you’re on affected versions. Check for signs of account compromise, review password reset activity, and stop assuming “we haven’t seen anything weird” means you’re safe. It usually just means nobody competent has looked yet. Same old crap, different CVE.
Anecdote time: this reminds me of an admin I once knew who ignored a critical patch because he didn’t want to interrupt his lunch. Two days later, an attacker interrupted it for him by turning his server into a steaming pile of compromise and panic. He finally learned the ancient lesson of systems administration: patch first, eat later, and never underestimate how quickly some evil little bastard on the internet will exploit your laziness.
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