Vulnerability · Published Aug 19, 2026 · Assigned by VulnCheck
CVE-2026-76228Renovate before 42.68.5 Remote Code Execution via Gradle Wrapper
Medium 6.7
In plain English
A medium-severity OS command injection in renovate-ce from mend. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 1.0% (higher than 62% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
Renovate versions >=32.124.0 and before 42.68.5 (and Mend renovate-ce/renovate-ee before 13.3.0) contain a command injection vulnerability in Gradle Wrapper artifact handling. When Renovate processes Gradle Wrapper updates, it invokes a wrapper update command via a shell (e.g. /bin/sh -c ... ./gradlew :wrapper --gradle-distribution-url <value>). If an attacker supplies a malicious gradle-wrapper.properties whose distributionUrl contains shell command substitution syntax such as $(...), the shell evaluates it before Gradle parses the URL, resulting in arbitrary command execution in the Renovate runtime. Exploitation requires the attacker to introduce the malicious file into a repository that Renovate scans; the issue occurs even when allowScripts is disabled.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| npm | renovate | 42.68.5 | GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| renovatebot | renovate | 32.124.0 – before 42.68.5 |
| mend | renovate-ce | 0 – before 13.3.0 |
| mend | renovate-ee-server | 0 – before 13.3.0 |
| mend | renovate-ee-worker | 0 – before 13.3.0 |
Weakness: CWE-78 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
References
- GitHub Security Advisory (GHSA-pfq2-hh62-7m96) vendor-advisory
- VulnCheck Advisory: Renovate before 42.68.5 Remote Code Execution via Gradle Wrapper third-party-advisory