CVE-2026-1388: Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in GitLab

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-02-25 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-1333

Description

GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 9.2 before 18.7.5, 18.8 before 18.8.5, and 18.9 before 18.9.1 that could have allowed an unauthenticated user to cause regular expression denial of service by sending specially crafted input to a merge request endpoint under certain conditions.

Affected products

GitLab: from 9.2.0 before 18.7.5; from 18.8.0 before 18.8.5; 18.9.0 — fixed in 18.7.5, 18.8.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: GitLab 18.7.5, 18.8.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2026/02/25/patch-release-gitlab-18-9-1-released/
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/587560
https://hackerone.com/reports/3482893

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