Conda Organization Infrastructure: Pwn Request in update workflow allows PR-controlled template rendering with SYNC_TOKEN
- Published
- Last modified
- Status
- published
- Known exploitation
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fix or patch referenced
- Public exploit
- None on Exploit-DB
Summary
The vulnerability affects the Conda Organization Infrastructure's GitHub Actions update workflow (used with conda/conda), where a pull request from an untrusted contributor can cause attacker-controlled template content to be rendered in a context holding a privileged access token. This could allow an attacker to run code and potentially access repository secrets and tokens with elevated permissions.
Summarized by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5. Verify details against the original sources.
Read the original description
Conda Organization Infrastructure is a centralized location for infrastructure codes. Prior to commit 9c0f238, a GitHub Actions Pwn Request vulnerability appears to remain present in conda/conda. The affected workflow is .github/workflows/update.yml. It is triggered by issue_comment events containing @conda-bot render or @conda-bot recreate. For the render path, the workflow obtains the pull request head repository and branch from the PR API, checks out that PR-controlled repository/ref using secrets.SYNC_TOKEN, and then runs conda/actions/template-files@7f6830b1428a9bd47f0b068892c77eae95207037. The external template-files action reads its default configuration and templates from the checked-out working directory. In the confirmed finding, that action uses an unsandboxed Jinja2 environment to render attacker-controlled template content. This creates a Pwn Request chain in which an untrusted PR/comment path can reach template rendering in a privileged token context. This issue has been patched via commit 9c0f238.
Affected versions
- conda infrastructure
fixed in 9c0f23857282ff5cf7a6b3ad6bf0dd6f9974be55