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Alpine Linux rebuilds GitLab after near-miss CVE-2026-97229 attack
Alpine Linux said an attacker tried to exploit critical GitLab CVE-2026-97229 on Oct. 20-21 on an unpatched instance; it found no proof of success but rebuilt GitLab and said packages and Oct. 21 releases were not tampered with.
Alpine Linux said on Oct. 28 that an attacker tried to exploit a critical GitLab flaw, CVE-2026-97229, against the project's self-hosted instance on Oct. 20 and 21, a week after GitLab published a fix1.
The project said it found no evidence the attack succeeded but could not rule it out, treated the instance as compromised, and rebuilt GitLab from scratch, resetting passwords and replacing secret keys1. Checks it described found no tampering in the aports repository, packages, or the Oct. 21 stable releases1.
Alpine described CVE-2026-97229 as a CVSS 10.0 issue in how GitLab evaluates regular expressions in CI configuration, with the underlying bug in Onigmo, the regex engine built into Ruby1. GitLab published fixed releases on Oct. 12; Alpine said the fix is patches to the Ruby that GitLab bundles in its own packages and container images1. Upstream Ruby shipped the fix on Oct. 23 in 3.3.13, 3.4.12 and 4.0.9, Alpine said1.
On Oct. 13, Alpine said it upgraded to GitLab 19.3.4 instead of 19.3.5, which had the fix, by mistake1. On Oct. 20 a newly registered account began probing; on Oct. 21 crafted CI configurations crashed GitLab workers eight times, and in four of those crashes Alpine said the attacker got partway through the exploit and failed at the next step1. The attacker also downloaded Alpine's GitLab container image, which the project said suggested they were tuning the exploit to that build1.
An upgrade to GitLab 19.3.6 on Oct. 22 did not close the hole, Alpine said, because the project used standard Ruby rather than GitLab's official packages that carry the Ruby patch1. It found the instance still vulnerable on Oct. 26, closed GitLab to everyone except developers and build servers on Oct. 27, and completed the rebuild on Oct. 281. The attacker returned Oct. 25-26 and failed to get back in after the account was blocked on Oct. 23, Alpine said1.
The project said anyone running GitLab with their own Ruby, from source or a custom image, needs Ruby 3.3.13, 3.4.12, 4.0.9 or later in addition to a GitLab upgrade1. Users of Alpine's alpinelinux/gitlab image were told to pull 19.3.6 again; images pulled before Oct. 27 and older tags remain vulnerable, it said1.
Alpine said signing keys for packages and releases were never stored on the GitLab server1. It said Oct. 21 releases 3.21.9, 3.22.7, 3.23.7 and 3.24.3, including ISOs and minirootfs tarballs used for official alpine Docker images, and packages built Oct. 20-24, matched aports commits verified against records outside GitLab1.
It listed remaining uncertainty: a successful exploit might leave no crash or web-log trace; some attack-day logs are gone; and it had no logging of outbound connections1. If the attack had succeeded, Alpine said possible exposure could include user emails, names and IPs, password hashes, 2FA secrets, CI variables, runner tokens and private repository data1.
GitLab remained closed for testing, Alpine said, while package mirrors, cgit and mailing lists stayed available1. Users were told to set a new password when the service reopens and to change the password elsewhere if it was reused1. Alpine's ruby packages in current branches include the upstream fix, it said, via apk upgrade1.