How severe is GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96?

GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 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-pfq2-hh62-7m96?

GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 affects the following packages: renovate (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96?

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.

How do I detect GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 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-pfq2-hh62-7m96 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-pfq2-hh62-7m96?

O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 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-pfq2-hh62-7m96 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 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-pfq2-hh62-7m96 published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 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-pfq2-hh62-7m96

MEDIUM

Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via Gradle Wrapper and malicious `distributionUrl`

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

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.properties into 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, and gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties).
Set distributionUrl in gradle-wrapper.properties to 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

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`renovate`	≥ 32.124.0&&< 42.68.5	42.68.5

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 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
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-pfq2-hh62-7m96 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-pfq2-hh62-7m96. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

### 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

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 in your dependencies?

O3 detects GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 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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