Headline
CVE-2023-34112: Github Action Vulnerability
JavaCPP Presets is a project providing Java distributions of native C++ libraries. All the actions in the bytedeco/javacpp-presets use the github.event.head_commit.message? parameter in an insecure way. For example, the commit message is used in a run statement - resulting in a command injection vulnerability due to string interpolation. No exploitation has been reported. This issue has been addressed in version 1.5.9. Users of JavaCPP Presets are advised to upgrade as a precaution.
Summary
All the actions in the bytedeco/javacpp-presets use the github.event.head_commit.message parameter in an insecure way. For example, the commit message is used in a run statement - resulting in a command injection vulnerability due to string interpolation.
Details and Impact
This vulnerability can be triggered by any user on GitHub. They just need to create a pull request with a commit message containing an exploit. (Note that first-time PR requests will not be run - but the attacker can submit a valid PR before submitting an invalid PR). The commit can be genuine, but the commit message can be malicious. This can be used to execute code on the GitHub runners (potentially use it for crypto-mining, and waste your resources) and can be used to exfiltrate any secrets that you use in the CI pipeline (including repository tokens). Here is a set of blog posts by Github’s security team explaining this issue.