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Improper Access Control in GitLab CE/EE Todos API

IdentifiersCVE-2026-3553CWE-863· Incorrect Authorization

CVE-2026-3553 is an improper access control vulnerability in GitLab Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE) affecting all versions from 12.0 before 18.10.8, 18.11 before 18.11.5, and 19.0 before 19.0.2. The flaw affects the Todos API, where incorrect authorization checks under certain conditions could allow an authenticated user to access confidential issue details that should not be visible to them. The issue is an authorization failure resulting in unintended disclosure of sensitive issue metadata/content via API responses.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation allows an authenticated user to view confidential issue details without proper authorization. The primary impact is unauthorized disclosure of sensitive project or issue information, which may expose internal discussions, issue metadata, or other confidential issue-related details to users who should not have access.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate patching is not possible, reduce exposure to the Todos API for untrusted or lower-privileged authenticated users, review and restrict account access to projects containing confidential issues, and monitor for anomalous API access to confidential issue data. These are temporary risk-reduction measures only; the definitive fix is to upgrade to a patched version.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade GitLab CE/EE to a fixed release. GitLab states the issue is remediated in 18.10.8, 18.11.5, and 19.0.2. Self-managed deployments running affected versions should upgrade to the appropriate patched version or later. GitLab.com was already patched at the time of disclosure.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
GitLabGitlabapplication

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What this page doesn’t show

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Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity2

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.