CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-6680 — Gitlab Gitlab security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.1

An improper certificate validation issue in Smartcard authentication in GitLab EE affecting all versions from 11.6 prior to 16.4.4, 16.5 prior to 16.5.4, and 16.6 prior to 16.6.2 allows an attacker to authenticate as another user given their public key if they use Smartcard authentication. Smartcard authentication is an experimental feature and has to be manually enabled by an administrator.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.1 (3.1)
Published
2023-12-15
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-295

Affected products

  • gitlab / gitlab

Showing 1 representative product identities from 3 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Cryptography, certificate, signature, and channel validation

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Inventory affected algorithms, key uses, trust stores, certificate validation settings, random sources, and plaintext channels across clients and services.
  • Determine which secrets, identities, signatures, or data protections depend on the affected primitive or validation path.
  • Check debug, compatibility, fallback, and hostname or audience override settings in build and runtime configuration.

Remediate safely

  • Use a maintained platform cryptographic API with approved algorithms, modes, parameters, randomness, and full peer identity validation.
  • Remove insecure fallback and validation bypasses; separate keys by purpose and load them from managed secret storage.
  • Plan rotation or reissuance for affected keys, certificates, tokens, hashes, or ciphertext and document compatibility sequencing.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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