CVE-2023-3994 — An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions starting fro

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 whic

01What is this vulnerability?

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.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
GitLab	GitLab	9.3, 16.1, 16.2

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Open the Sigma generator with a pre-filled prompt for this CVE to draft a starting detection in your stack of choice:

Open in Sigma generator →

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-08-02T00:06:50.342Z
• Last modified: 2025-11-20T04:09:23.305Z

09References

• gitlab.com — https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/416225
• hackerone.com — https://hackerone.com/reports/1963255