CVE-2021-39880 apollo_upload_server has Denial of Service vulnerability

What is CVE-2021-39880?

CVE-2021-39880 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab, published on 5 Oct 2021. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A Denial Of Service vulnerability in the apollo_upload_server Ruby gem in GitLab CE/EE all versions starting from 11.9 before 14.0.9, all versions starting from 14.1 before 14.1.4, and all versions starting from 14.2 before 14.2.2 allows an attacker to deny access to all users via specially crafted requests to the apollo_upload_server middleware.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-39880?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including gitlab and apollo_upload_server. It affects 1 product.

Products include Gitlab Gitlab.

How do I fix CVE-2021-39880?

Upgrade gitlab to a fixed version for your release line: 14.0.9, 14.1.4 or 14.2.2.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2021-39880 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-39880 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Gitlab Gitlab

• CVE-2026-97229 GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition Integer Overflow or Wraparound Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2026-85706 GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition Path Traversal Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2023-7028 GitLab Community and Enterprise Editions Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2021-22205 GitLab Community and Enterprise Editions Remote Code Execution Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2021-39935 GitLab Community and Enterprise Editions Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) Exploited Medium 6.8

All Gitlab Gitlab vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BIT-gitlab-2021-39880, DEBIAN-CVE-2021-39880, GHSA-w6pv-c757-6rgr, UBUNTU-CVE-2021-39880.