Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2023-3994 json

Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in GitLab

published 2023-08-02 3 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also BIT-gitlab-2023-3994 , EUVD-2023-44617

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.0%
EPSS 1.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 61%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions starting from 9.3 before 16.0.8, all versions starting from 16.1 before 16.1.3, all versions starting from 16.2 before 16.2.2. A Regular Expression Denial of Service was possible via sending crafted payloads which use ProjectReferenceFilter to the preview_markdown endpoint.

Patch / fix

  • bitnami gitlab 16.0.8, 16.1.3, 16.2.2
  • GitLab GitLab 16.0.8, 16.1.3, 16.2.2

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-3994 updated

gitlab: ReDoS when sending crafted payloads which use ProjectReferenceFilter

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift4/ose-console
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.96% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 61% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • hackerone.com https://hackerone.com/reports/1963255 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
OSV 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
bitnami gitlab
>=9.3.0, <16.0.8
>=16.1.0, <16.1.3
>=16.2.0, <16.2.2
16.0.8
16.1.3
16.2.2

Affected products

  • GitLab GitLab

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-1333 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Enhance with deb and rpm package type records.