Egress Policy Bypass via DNS over HTTPS (DoH) in Harden-Runner (Community Tier)
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 2.16
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: none
- Automatable: no
- Technical impact: partial
Summary
Harden-Runner is a CI/CD security agent that works like an EDR for GitHub Actions runners. In versions 2.15.1 and below, a DNS over HTTPS (DoH) vulnerability allows attackers to bypass egress-policy: block network restrictions by tunneling exfiltrated data through permitted HTTPS endpoints like dns.google. The attack works by encoding sensitive data (e.g., the runner's hostname) as subdomains in DoH queries, which appear as legitimate HTTPS traffic to Harden-Runner's domain-based filtering but are ultimately forwarded to an attacker-controlled domain. This effectively enables data exfiltration without directly connecting to any blocked destination. Exploitation requires the attacker to already have code execution within the GitHub Actions workflow. The issue was fixed in version 2.16.0.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- step-security harden-runner
fixed in 2.16