Denial of service via Markdown rendering exhaustion
Published Oct 17, 2022 · Updated May 13, 2025
Uncontrolled resource consumption in GitLab CE/EE before 15.2.5, 15.3 through 15.3.3, and 15.4.0 allows remote attackers to exhaust CPU. The Markdown preview and issue-preview paths feed crafted descriptions into Banzai ReferenceExtractor, whose cache_collection_render processing consumes a CPU core until the 60-second request timeout. The /api/v4/markdown route is reachable without authentication; parallel requests can occupy multiple cores and make a self-managed instance unavailable.
Summary
What happened
Uncontrolled resource consumption in GitLab CE/EE before 15.2.5, 15.3 through 15.3.3, and 15.4.0 allows remote attackers to exhaust CPU. The Markdown preview and issue-preview paths feed crafted descriptions into Banzai ReferenceExtractor, whose cache_collection_render processing consumes a CPU core until the 60-second request timeout. The /api/v4/markdown route is reachable without authentication; parallel requests can occupy multiple cores and make a self-managed instance unavailable.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2022-3283
- Published
- Oct 17, 2022
- Updated
- May 13, 2025
- Vendor
- GitLab
- Product
- GitLab
- Classifications
- CWE-400, T1499.002
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Oct 17, 2022CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 13, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
Compare your product and version with the public record. A matching version still requires validation against your environment.
Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=<15.2.5
- Affected versionversion=>=15.3, <15.3.4
- Affected versionversion=>=15.4, <15.4.1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- GitLab Markdown preview CPU-exhaustion reproductionproof of concept · demonstrated
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
Check the software in your environment
Book a demo to see how Hinoki identifies affected software and validates exploitability in your environment.
Book a demo