Exposed GitLab project email addresses let attackers push code

GitLab project email addresses, designed for bug report submission, inadvertently contain long-lived authentication tokens that function as credentials — creating a serious access control flaw when exposed publicly. Attackers discovered that simply modifying the '-issue' suffix to '-merge-request' in these addresses allows them to submit merge requests and push code to private repositories, entirely bypassing IP-based restrictions. This matters because long-lived tokens with broad implicit trust effectively become skeleton keys when leaked, enabling source code theft and secrets exposure. The core failure is a combination of poor secret hygiene (publishing email addresses containing tokens) and insufficient token scoping, compounding the risk that no expiration mechanism limits the window of exploitation.