CVE-2025-32955
MEDIUMCVE-2025-32955 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6) CWE-268 vulnerability in step-security/harden-runner. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2025-32955 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Harden-Runner Evasion of 'disable-sudo' policy
Blast Radius
step-security/harden-runnerReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects GitHub Actions packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Harden-Runner is a CI/CD security agent that works like an EDR for GitHub Actions runners. Versions from 0.12.0 to before 2.12.0 are vulnerable to disable-sudo bypass. Harden-Runner includes a policy option disable-sudo to prevent the GitHub Actions runner user from using sudo. This is implemented by removing the runner user from the sudoers file. However, this control can be bypassed as the runner user, being part of the docker group, can interact with the Docker daemon to launch privileged containers or access the host filesystem. This allows the attacker to regain root access or restore the sudoers file, effectively bypassing the restriction. This issue has been patched in version 2.12.0.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦GitHub Actions | step-security/harden-runner | ≥ 0.12.0&&< 2.12.0 | 2.12.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for step-security/harden-runner. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update step-security/harden-runner to 2.12.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-32955 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2025-32955 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2025-32955. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-32955 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2025-32955 across GitHub Actions dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.