CVE-2022-2931 Denial of service in GitLab

High 7.5 Published 17 Oct 2022 Updated 13 May 2025

Attackers can cause high CPU usage and denial of service by adding malformed content to GitLab issue descriptions.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2022-2931?

CVE-2022-2931 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab, published on 17 Oct 2022. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A potential DOS vulnerability was discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions before 15.1.6, all versions starting from 15.2 before 15.2.4, all versions starting from 15.3 before 15.3.2. Malformed content added to the issue description could have been used to trigger high CPU usage.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-2931?

1 open source package ship an affected version, including gitlab. It affects 1 product.

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`gitlab` Bitnami	All versions	`15.1.6, 15.2.4, 15.3.2`

Products include Gitlab Gitlab.

How do I fix CVE-2022-2931?

Upgrade gitlab to a fixed version for your release line: 15.1.6, 15.2.4 or 15.3.2.

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-2022-2931 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2022-2931 exists.

All Gitlab Gitlab vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BIT-gitlab-2022-2931, GHSA-p95h-29v8-j2h6, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-2931.