Renovate (helmv3 manager): repository value from Chart.yaml is injected into helm registry login commands

Impact

Renovate's helmv3 manager appends the repository parameter to a helm registry login command without sanitizing it, so a crafted Chart.yaml turns into arbitrary command execution on the machine running Renovate. Self-hosted Renovate is a high-value target in a platform pipeline: the bot process typically carries long-lived Git tokens, registry credentials and package-manager auth for every repository it watches, so command execution there is a credential-harvesting position over the whole CI estate, including the repos that build node images and deployment manifests. The affected range is long — 31.51.0 up to 40.33.0 — so most self-hosted deployments that have not tracked releases closely are exposed.

Who can reach it

An attacker with write access to a repository that Renovate scans; they commit a malicious Chart.yaml and wait for the bot to run. No Renovate-side credentials are needed, and no interaction from a maintainer beyond the bot's normal scheduled run.

What to do

Upgrade Renovate to 40.33.0 or later. For self-hosted deployments this is a version or container image bump and a restart of the bot job — no node drain and no reboot. Until then, treat write access to scanned repositories as equivalent to code execution on the Renovate host, and rotate any tokens that host held if you suspect it ran attacker-controlled charts.

References