U.S. flag   An official website of the United States government
Dot gov

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Https

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (Dot gov) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

CVE-2021-32638 Detail

Description

Github's CodeQL action is provided to run CodeQL-based code scanning on non-GitHub CI/CD systems and requires a GitHub access token to connect to a GitHub repository. The runner and its documentation previously suggested passing the GitHub token as a command-line parameter to the process instead of reading it from a file, standard input, or an environment variable. This approach made the token visible to other processes on the same machine, for example in the output of the `ps` command. If the CI system publicly exposes the output of `ps`, for example by logging the output, then the GitHub access token can be exposed beyond the scope intended. Users of the CodeQL runner on 3rd-party systems, who are passing a GitHub token via the `--github-auth` flag, are affected. This applies to both GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise users. Users of the CodeQL Action on GitHub Actions are not affected. The `--github-auth` flag is now considered insecure and deprecated. The undocumented `--external-repository-token` flag has been removed. To securely provide a GitHub access token to the CodeQL runner, users should **do one of the following instead**: Use the `--github-auth-stdin` flag and pass the token on the command line via standard input OR set the `GITHUB_TOKEN` environment variable to contain the token, then call the command without passing in the token. The old flag remains present for backwards compatibility with existing workflows. If the user tries to specify an access token using the `--github-auth` flag, there is a deprecation warning printed to the terminal that directs the user to one of the above options. All CodeQL runner releases codeql-bundle-20210304 onwards contain the patches. We recommend updating to a recent version of the CodeQL runner, storing a token in your CI system's secret storage mechanism, and passing the token to the CodeQL runner using `--github-auth-stdin` or the `GITHUB_TOKEN` environment variable. If still using the old flag, ensure that process output, such as from `ps`, is not persisted in CI logs.


Metrics

NVD enrichment efforts reference publicly available information to associate vector strings. CVSS information contributed by other sources is also displayed.
CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

By selecting these links, you will be leaving NIST webspace. We have provided these links to other web sites because they may have information that would be of interest to you. No inferences should be drawn on account of other sites being referenced, or not, from this page. There may be other web sites that are more appropriate for your purpose. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the facts presented on these sites. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned on these sites. Please address comments about this page to nvd@nist.gov.

Hyperlink Resource
https://github.com/github/codeql-action/commit/58defc0652e935f6f2ffc70a82828b98d75476fb Patch  Third Party Advisory 
https://github.com/github/codeql-action/commit/88714e3a60e72ec53caa0e6a203652ee1f3fb1db Patch  Third Party Advisory 
https://github.com/github/codeql-action/releases/tag/codeql-bundle-20210304 Third Party Advisory 
https://github.com/github/codeql-action/security/advisories/GHSA-g36v-2xff-pv5m Exploit  Mitigation  Patch  Third Party Advisory 
https://www.netmeister.org/blog/passing-passwords.html Third Party Advisory 

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor cwe source acceptance level NIST   GitHub, Inc.  
CWE-214 Invocation of Process Using Visible Sensitive Information GitHub, Inc.  

Known Affected Software Configurations Switch to CPE 2.2

CPEs loading, please wait.

Denotes Vulnerable Software
Are we missing a CPE here? Please let us know.

Change History

4 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2021-32638
NVD Published Date:
05/25/2021
NVD Last Modified:
07/02/2022
Source:
GitHub, Inc.