Zombie Workflows: GitHub Actions Vulnerabilities and Platform Fix

The SonarSource blog explains how GitHub Actions, a popular CI/CD automation system, can be exploited through insecure workflows that run on the pull_request_target event because they may expose secrets or privileged tokens to untrusted code execution, a class of issues known as Pwn Requests. When vulnerabilities are “fixed” only in the default branch, attackers can still trigger older vulnerable versions of workflow files from other branches, a pattern the authors call “Zombie Workflows.” Their research found hundreds of potentially vulnerable workflows across popular repositories, and they reported these to maintainers. GitHub has changed the behavior of pull_request_target so that workflow versions are taken from the default branch to mitigate this issue, but developers still need to guard against other workflow vulnerabilities and can use tools like SonarQube to scan for them.

https://www.sonarsource.com/blog/zombie-workflows-a-github-actions-horror-story

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