Max-Severity GitLab Vulnerability Exploited Against Alpine Linux
A recent code execution vulnerability in GitLab was exploited one week after disclosure in a failed attack against Alpine Linux’s instance.
Tracked as CVE-2026-97229 (CVSS score of 10/10), the flaw stems from insufficient regular expression validation in Onigmo, Ruby’s regular expression engine.
The bug “could have allowed an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code on the GitLab server via a specially crafted regular expression in a CI/CD configuration,” GitLab noted in an October 12 advisory.
According to Alpine Linux, a threat actor targeted its GitLab instance with a CVE-2026-97229 exploit on October 20 and 21. The attack failed, but the Linux distribution rebuilt the instance from scratch.
“Our checks show that the aports repository, packages, and the October 21 releases were not tampered with,” Alpine Linux notes.
It is still testing the GitLab instance before public release, and has reset all passwords, warning of observed automated login attempts...
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