GHSA-xv56-3wq5-9997 — renovate
MEDIUMGHSA-xv56-3wq5-9997 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.7) CWE-77 vulnerability in renovate. A fix is available for renovate — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via kustomize manager and malicious helm repository
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-xv56-3wq5-9997 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 377,166 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
Summary
The user-provided chart name in the kustomize manager is appended to the helm pull --untar command without proper sanitization.
Details
Adversaries can provide a maliciously crafted kustomization.yaml in conjunction with a Helm repo's index.yaml file to trick Renovate to execute arbitrary code.
The value for the depName argument for the helmRepositoryArgs function in lib/modules/manager/kustomize/artifacts.ts is not being escaped using the quote function from the shlex package.
This lack of proper sanitization has been present in the product since version 39.218.9 (https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/commit/cc08c6e98f19e6258c5d3180c70c98e1be0b0d37), released on March 26 of 2025.
PoC
- Create a mock Helm repository. Have its
index.yamlendpoint return:
apiVersion: v1
entries:
"example || kill 1; echo":
- version: 1.0.1
created: 2016-10-06T16:23:20.499814565-06:00
- version: 1.0.0
created: 2016-10-06T16:23:20.499543808-06:00
- Create a git repo with the following content:
renovate.json5:
{
$schema: "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
postUpdateOptions: [
"kustomizeInflateHelmCharts",
]
}
kustomization.yaml:
kind: Kustomization
apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
helmCharts:
- name: "example || kill 1; echo"
repo: TODO reference the mocked Helm repository over https
version: 1.0.0
with the todo resolved
charts/.gitkeep:
(empty)
- 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.
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
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | renovate | ≥ 39.218.0&&< 40.33.0 | 40.33.0npm install renovate@40.33.0 |
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 40.33.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-xv56-3wq5-9997 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-xv56-3wq5-9997 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-xv56-3wq5-9997. 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-xv56-3wq5-9997 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-xv56-3wq5-9997 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.