How severe is CVE-2023-7028?

CVE-2023-7028 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 10 (CRITICAL). EPSS estimates a 94.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2023-7028: Weak Password Recovery Mechanism for Forgotten

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

GitLab Community and Enterprise Editions Improper Access Control Vulnerability is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2024-05-01

Remediation due

2024-05-22

Required action
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.

CISA notes
https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2024/01/11/critical-security-release-gitlab-16-7-2-released/ ; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-7028

Description

An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 16.1 prior to 16.1.6, 16.2 prior to 16.2.9, 16.3 prior to 16.3.7, 16.4 prior to 16.4.5, 16.5 prior to 16.5.6, 16.6 prior to 16.6.4, and 16.7 prior to 16.7.2 in which user account password reset emails could be delivered to an unverified email address.

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CNA10 CRITICAL

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableyes

Technical impacttotal

Exploitation Context

as of October 13, 2026

All KEV statistics→

CISA added CVE-2023-7028 to the KEV catalog 110 days after its CVE record was published. The median for entries added in 2024 is 21.5 days.
It is one of 5 GitLab entries in the CISA KEV catalog, and the only one added in 2024.
Its current EPSS score (94.6%) is higher than that of 78% of CISA KEV entries.

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
GitLab	GitLab GitLab	16.1 to <16.1.6 16.2 to <16.2.9 16.3 to <16.3.7 16.4 to <16.4.5 16.5 to <16.5.6 16.6 to <16.6.4 16.7 to <16.7.2

References

3 Links

Exploits & PoCs

HackerOne Bug Bounty Report #2293343

Issue trackers

GitLab Issue #436084

Other references

https://www.vicarius.io/vsociety/posts/critical-gitlab-account-takeover-vulnerability-cve-2023-7028

Record Details

Published

2024-01-12

Last updated

2026-08-15

Assigner (CNA)

GitLab

Credited to

Thanks [asterion04](https://hackerone.com/asterion04) for reporting this vulnerability through our HackerOne bug bounty program

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Tool categories

IAM Tools Application Security Tools

CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.

CVE-2023-7028