GHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf — renovate
MEDIUMGHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.5) CWE-526 vulnerability in renovate. A fix is available for renovate — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Child processes spawned by Renovate incorrectly have full access to environment variables
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
renovatenpmDescription
When Renovate spawns child processes, their access to environment variables is filtered to an allowlist, to prevent unauthorized access to privileged credentials that the Renovate process has access to.
Since 42.68.1 (2025-12-30), this filtering had been inadvertently removed, and so any child processes spawned from these versions will have had access to any environment variables that Renovate has access to.
This could lead to insider attackers and outside attackers being able to exflitrate secrets from the Renovate deployment.
It is recommended to rotate (+ revoke) any credentials that Renovate has access to, in case any spawned child processes have attempted to exfiltrate any secrets.
Impact
Child processes spawned by Renovate (i.e. npm install, anything defined in postUpgradeTasks or postUpdateOptions) will have full access to the environment variables that the Renovate process has.
This could lead to insider attackers and outside attackers being able to exflitrate secrets from the Renovate deployment.
Patches
This is patched in 42.96.3 and 43.4.4.
Workarounds
There are no workarounds, other than upgrading your Renovate version.
Why did this happen?
As part of work towards https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/security/advisories/GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96, one of the preparatory changes we made was moving to execa.
One of the default behaviours of execa is to extend the process' environment variables with any new ones, rather than override them.
This was missed in code review, which meant that since this version, the full environment variables have been provided to any child processes spawned with execa by Renovate.
This was discovered as part of an unrelated change.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | renovate | ≥ 42.68.1&&< 42.96.3 | 42.96.3npm install renovate@42.96.3 |
| 📦npm | renovate | ≥ 43.0.0&&< 43.4.4 | 43.4.4npm install renovate@43.4.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for renovate, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update renovate to 42.96.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-8wc6-vgrq-x6cf across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.