CVE-2026-61549

Summary

Woodpecker: Privilege escalation via unrestricted serviceAccountName in the Kubernetes backend

Severity

high

EPSS

0.3% (p20)

CWE

CWE-269, CWE-862

Also known as

GHSA-qf34-295c-26v8#go.woodpecker-ci.org/woodpecker/v3

Published

2026-07-14

Updated

2026-07-14

Advisory details

Impact

A privilege escalation vulnerability affects Woodpecker instances using the Kubernetes backend.

The pipeline option backend_options.kubernetes.serviceAccountName was passed directly to the pod spec without any admin gating.

Who is impacted: any operator running the Kubernetes backend. Any user with Push permission on a connected repository can run pipeline pods under an arbitrary ServiceAccount in the pipeline namespace, gaining that account's RBAC permissions. If a privileged ServiceAccount is reachable in that namespace, this can lead to secret exfiltration (database credentials, API keys, TLS certs) and full cluster takeover.

Patches

https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/pull/6792

Workarounds

Operators who cannot upgrade immediately can mitigate by any of:

• Restrict Push access on repositories connected to the Kubernetes-backed instance to trusted users only.
• Harden the pipeline namespace: ensure no privileged ServiceAccount exists or is bound in the namespace where pipeline pods run; keep the default ServiceAccount minimally privileged.
• Disable ServiceAccount token automounting for ServiceAccounts that should not be used by pipelines.
• Enforce an admission policy (e.g. OPA/Gatekeeper, Kyverno, or a ValidatingAdmissionPolicy) that rejects pipeline pods setting an unexpected serviceAccountName.
• Use a dedicated, isolated namespace per org/instance with no sensitive RBAC bindings.

Resources

• Vulnerable option introduced in commit 609ba481b5e912f59aaae8ca7bc22b44523c5e37
• Affected versions: v1.0.0 through v3.15.0
• Source: pipeline/backend/kubernetes/backend_options.go (field ServiceAccountName), pipeline/backend/kubernetes/pod.go (assigned to pod spec with no gating)

References

• https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-qf34-295c-26v8
• https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/security/advisories/GHSA-qf34-295c-26v8
• https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/pull/6792

Related advisories

• CVE-2026-73842 — critical · Go/github.com/openchoreo/openchoreo
• CVE-2026-85990 — high · Packagist/leantime/leantime
• CVE-2026-75837 — high · Packagist/getgrav/grav
• GHSA-j9fc-w3mr-x6mv — high · npm/@budibase/server
• CVE-2026-54168 — medium · Go/github.com/openshift-pipelines/pipelines-as-code
• CVE-2026-114125 — critical · npm/storybook
• CVE-2026-111058 — critical · PyPI/mercury
• CVE-2026-77524 — critical · Go/github.com/kedacore/keda

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