Details

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

1. Create a repository with a Gradle Wrapper (gradlew, gradlew.bat, gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.jar, and gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties).
2. Set distributionUrl in gradle-wrapper.properties to include $(...).
3. Run Renovate against the repository.
4. 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.

Severity

• CVSS Score: 6.7 / 10 (Medium)
• Vector String: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References

• https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/security/advisories/GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96
• https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate
• https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/releases/tag/42.68.5

This data is provided by OSV and the GitHub Advisory Database (CC-BY 4.0).

v42.68.5

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• postUpgradeTasks: always run commands with shell mode (140a777)
• util/exec: don't use shell by default (f430552)

Documentation

• self-hosting: note risk of postUpgradeTasks with shell execution (d2872e2)

Code Refactoring

• github-actions: Simplify line parsing (#​40216) (fb80abb)
• util/exec: specify the args array for execa (a0a84a4)
• util/exec: use spawnargs to return error messages (b19c3ee)

Tests

• only validate subset of arguments to exec (bebff1c)
• remove encoding from stubs (#​40221) (8fab5f0)
• util/exec: clarify existing behaviour of shell parameter (d0bee7f)
• util/exec: document ability to use arguments with spaces (c5c98ea)

v42.68.4

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• deps: update ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image docker tag to v12.20.9 (main) (#​40224) (51d097e)

v42.68.3

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• deps: update ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image docker tag to v12.20.8 (main) (#​40223) (847413f)

Miscellaneous Chores

• deps: update python:3.14 docker digest to f05033a (main) (#​40222) (021ace6)

v42.68.2

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• deps: update ghcr.io/containerbase/sidecar docker tag to v13.25.19 (main) (#​40219) (16a1325)
• deps: update ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image docker tag to v12.20.7 (main) (#​40220) (9d6553d)

v42.68.1

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• util/exec: migrate to execa for command execution (#​40212) (e773b32)

Miscellaneous Chores

• deps: update dependency pnpm to v10.26.2 (main) (#​40217) (fdbeaba)
• deps: update ghcr.io/containerbase/devcontainer docker tag to v13.25.19 (main) (#​40218) (3d8cca4)

v42.68.0

Compare Source

Features

• Add exact versioning (#​40098) (22721ed)

Miscellaneous Chores

• deps: update containerbase/internal-tools action to v3.14.42 (main) (#​40214) (73c14df)

v42.67.0

Compare Source

Features

• typst: Update datasource to use official registry API (#​38982) (151d78f)

Documentation

• remove announcement bar properly (#​40164) (99664ea)

Miscellaneous Chores

• deps: update python:3.14 docker digest to 5279485 (main) (#​40211) (4c7edaf)
• deps: update python:3.14 docker digest to 5fdc8eb (main) (#​40210) (14b4782)
• deps: update python:3.14 docker digest to 8797f8e (main) (#​40209) (e1d620e)

Code Refactoring

• util/exec: remove deprecated encoding property (#​40199) (39bfc09)

v42.66.14

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• deps: update ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image docker tag to v12.20.6 (main) (#​40207) (ac0e6ae)

v42.66.13

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• deps: update ghcr.io/renovatebot/base-image docker tag to v12.20.5 (main) (#​40206) (a7d4425)

Miscellaneous Chores

• eslint: increase heap size to prevent OOM errors (#​40183) (6743a79)

Code Refactoring

• config: enable incremental TypeScript builds (#​40184) (cc08ce0)
• platform/local: use shared rawExec for commands (#​40200) (a0de103)

v42.66.12

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• types: correct comments for error types (#​40202) (ef09ba0)

Documentation

• update references to renovate/renovate (main) (#​40188) (f31798a)

Miscellaneous Chores

• clarify security testing against Mend-hosted infra (#​40197) (bd365e8)
• deps: update containerbase/internal-tools action to v3.14.40 (main) (#​40190) (4bcc400)
• deps: update containerbase/internal-tools action to v3.14.41 (main) (#​40194) (00706e3)
• deps: update dependency @​containerbase/eslint-plugin to v1.1.24 (main) (#​40191) (40c49e6)
• deps: update dependency @​containerbase/istanbul-reports-html to v1.1.21 (main) (#​40192) (dc8d9f9)
• deps: update dependency @​containerbase/semantic-release-pnpm to v1.3.12 (main) (#​40193) (f4663e7)
• deps: update dependency renovatebot/github-action to v44.2.2 (main) (#​40195) (9ef65b9)
• deps: update dependency typescript-eslint to v8.50.1 (main) (#​40204) (ab6bfa5)

Code Refactoring

• github: add GraphQL branch query adapter (#​40177) (65a961c)

v42.66.11

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• cache: use bitbucket-server as platform cache key (#​40168) (fb15aa4)

Miscellaneous Chores

• build: exclude nested node_modules from tsconfig (#​40179) (4b8803d)

v42.66.10

Compare Source

Bug Fixes

• manager/gradle: ignore DependencySubstitution modules (#​39965) (4392c1c)

v42.66.9

Compare Source

Build System

• deps: update dependency re2 to v1.23.0 (main) (#​40173) (76db2ee)