Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via Gradle Wrapper and malicious `distributionUrl`GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96
MEDIUMGHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.7) OS Command Injection vulnerability in renovate. A fix is available for renovate — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
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
Summary
Renovate can be tricked into executing shell code while updating the Gradle Wrapper. A malicious distributionUrl in gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties can lead to command execution in the Renovate runtime.
Details
When Renovate handles Gradle Wrapper artifacts, it may run a wrapper update command such as:
./gradlew :wrapper --gradle-distribution-url <value>
In the observed behavior, Renovate executes this via a shell (e.g., /bin/sh -c ...).
If distributionUrl contains shell command substitution syntax like $(...), the shell evaluates it before Gradle validates/parses the URL.
After that, Gradle attempts to parse the URL as a URI and fails with URISyntaxException, but the shell substitution has already executed.
This is reproducible even when allowScripts is disabled (default is OFF), because this execution happens as part of Gradle Wrapper artifact handling rather than “repository install scripts”.
Prerequisites / attack conditions:
- The attacker must be able to get a malicious
gradle-wrapper.propertiesinto a repository that Renovate scans (e.g., direct write access, or a maintainer merges an attacker’s change/PR). - Renovate must be configured to process Gradle Wrapper updates/artifacts for that repository (default behavior for the Gradle Wrapper manager).
PoC
- Create a repository with a Gradle Wrapper (
gradlew,gradlew.bat,gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar, andgradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties). - Set
distributionUrlingradle-wrapper.propertiesto include$(...). - Run Renovate against the repository.
- Observe that a file is created during Renovate’s wrapper update step before Gradle fails with
URISyntaxException.
A screen recording is attached showing end-to-end reproduction. In the demo, the payload creates /tmp/passwd_dump containing /etc/passwd, demonstrating that file read/exfiltration is possible within the Renovate execution context.
Impact
This allows arbitrary command execution in the Renovate runtime during Gradle Wrapper updates. Depending on deployment, this may expose credentials/tokens available to the bot and may allow an attacker to modify repositories or access internal resources reachable from the Renovate environment.
Remediation
Upgrading to Renovate 42.68.5 (2025-12-31) fixes this issue, and closes out other risks of shell evaluation for commands run by Renovate.
If using the composer, yarn (v1) or flux managers, please upgrade to 42.74.5 (2026-01-08), as there were follow-up fixes to keep these managers working.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | renovate | ≥ 32.124.0&&< 42.68.5 | 42.68.5npm install renovate@42.68.5 |
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 42.68.5 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Red Hat does not ship or use an affected version of Renovate. The vulnerability affects Renovate 32.124.0 up to (but not including) 42.68.5 and was fixed in 42.68.5 (GHSA-mqp7-cg7m-4hhq).
Red Hat products are not affected (see statement). Upstream, the issue is resolved by upgrading Renovate to 42.68.5 or later (or Mend renovate-ce/renovate-ee to 13.3.0); it can also be mitigated by restricting repository write access so untrusted users cannot introduce a malicious gradle-wrapper.properties.Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.