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Critical · 9.0 CVE-2026-61549 EUVD-2026-78774GHSA-qf34-295c-26v8GO-2026-5992

Woodpecker: Privilege escalation via unrestricted serviceAccountName in the Kubernetes backend

Published Sep 15, 2026 · Updated Sep 16, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

Woodpecker is a CI/CD engine. From 1.0.0 until 3.16.0, pipeline/backend/kubernetes/backend_options.go defines backend_options.kubernetes.serviceAccountName, and the Kubernetes backend in pipeline/backend/kubernetes/pod.go copies that pipeline-step value directly into the pod specification without administrator authorization. Any user with Push permission on a connected repository can therefore run pipeline pods under an arbitrary ServiceAccount in the pipeline namespace and inherit that account's RBAC permissions. When a privileged ServiceAccount is reachable, the attacker can exfiltrate secrets such as database credentials, API keys, and TLS certificates and may take over the cluster. This issue is fixed in version 3.16.0.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
woodpecker-ci woodpecker >= 1.0.0, < 3.16.0 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Leap 16.0 govulncheck-vulndb 0.0.20260723T184607-160000.1.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:21483-1

Affected packages

Advisories 1

References