CVE-2023-6159 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in GitLab

Medium 6.5 Published 26 Jan 2024 Updated 14 Aug 2026

An attacker can cause a denial of service in GitLab by submitting a maliciously crafted Cargo.toml file that triggers inefficient regular expression processing.

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

What is CVE-2023-6159?

CVE-2023-6159 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab, published on 26 Jan 2024. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 12.7 prior to 16.6.6, 16.7 prior to 16.7.4, and 16.8 prior to 16.8.1 It was possible for an attacker to trigger a Regular Expression Denial of Service via a `Cargo.toml` containing maliciously crafted input.

Weakness: CWE-1333

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-6159?

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

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`gitlab` Bitnami	From `12.7.0`	`16.6.6, 16.7.4, 16.8.1`

Products include Gitlab Gitlab.

How do I fix CVE-2023-6159?

Upgrade gitlab to a fixed version for your release line: 16.6.6, 16.7.4 or 16.8.1.

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-2023-6159 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-6159 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Gitlab Gitlab vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BIT-gitlab-2023-6159, GHSA-6hch-mpjp-2743, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-6159.