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Denial of Service in GitLab GraphQL JSON Validation

IdentifiersCVE-2025-11447CWE-770· Allocation of Resources Without…

CVE-2025-11447 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) affecting all versions from 11.0 before 18.3.5, 18.4 before 18.4.3, and 18.5 before 18.5.1. The flaw is in the JSON validation logic used when processing incoming GraphQL requests. An unauthenticated remote attacker can send specially crafted JSON payloads to the GitLab GraphQL endpoint, causing the validation path to consume excessive CPU and memory. This uncontrolled resource consumption can render the GitLab instance unresponsive. The issue is described as stemming from insufficient resource allocation limits or throttling in the vulnerable processing path, and GitLab remediated it by introducing stricter JSON schema validation to reject malformed requests.

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Impact, mitigation & remediation

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Impact

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Successful exploitation allows an unauthenticated attacker to trigger a denial-of-service condition against a vulnerable GitLab instance. The primary impact is loss of availability: excessive CPU and memory consumption during GraphQL JSON validation can degrade performance severely or cause the service to become unresponsive. Based on the provided content, the vulnerability affects exposed GraphQL API surfaces across affected deployment configurations.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate patching is not possible, reduce exposure to the GraphQL endpoint by restricting network access to trusted users and systems, placing the endpoint behind filtering or reverse-proxy controls, and applying rate limiting or request-throttling controls to GraphQL requests where feasible. Monitoring for malformed or unusually expensive GraphQL JSON requests and blocking abusive sources may reduce exploitability, but the provided content indicates the definitive fix is upgrading to a patched version.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade GitLab CE/EE to a fixed release: 18.3.5 or later on the 18.3 branch, 18.4.3 or later on the 18.4 branch, or 18.5.1 or later on the 18.5 branch. GitLab's fix introduced stricter JSON schema validation in the GraphQL API so malformed requests are rejected before they can drive excessive resource consumption. Applying the vendor security release is the recommended remediation.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

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VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

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EXPOSURE SURFACE

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GitLabGitlabapplication

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