Pipelines do not validate child UIDs
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- Security bypass
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · Low · None
- Fix status
- No fix listed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · NVD. Fix status from CNA and GitHub. Impact type from CWE-345.
Summary
Tekton Pipelines project provides k8s-style resources for declaring CI/CD-style pipelines. Starting in version 0.35.0, pipelines do not validate child UIDs, which means that a user that has access to create TaskRuns can create their own Tasks that the Pipelines controller will accept as the child Task. While the software stores and validates the PipelineRun's (api version, kind, name, uid) in the child Run's OwnerReference, it only store (api version, kind, name) in the ChildStatusReference. This means that if a client had access to create TaskRuns on a cluster, they could create a child TaskRun for a pipeline with the same name + owner reference, and the Pipeline controller picks it up as if it was the original TaskRun. This is problematic since it can let users modify the config of Pipelines at runtime, which violates SLSA L2 Service Generated / Non-falsifiable requirements. This issue can be used to trick the Pipeline controller into associating unrelated Runs to the Pipeline, feeding its data through the rest of the Pipeline. This requires access to create TaskRuns, so impact may vary depending on one Tekton setup. If users already have unrestricted access to create any Task/PipelineRun, this does not grant any additional capabilities. As of time of publication, there are no known patches for this issue.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- Poc
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Partial
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| backstage | pipeline | 0.35.0 – 0.49.0 | — | No fix listed | CNA |
| — | github.com/tektoncd/pipeline (Go) | 0.35.0 – 0.52.0 | — | No fix listed | GHSA-w2h3-vvvq-3m53 |
- pipeline Vendorbackstage Affected 0.35.0 – 0.49.0 Fixed in — No fix listed CNA
- github.com/tektoncd/pipeline (Go) Vendor— Affected 0.35.0 – 0.52.0 Fixed in — No fix listed GHSA-w2h3-vvvq-3m53
Remediation
No fixed version listed by the sources yet.
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
Not affected: 6 products
- OpenShift Pipelines
- OpenShift Serverless
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
- Red Hat OpenShift Data Science (RHODS)
- Red Hat OpenShift GitOps
- Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization 4
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2023-37264
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-w2h3-vvvq-3m53
References
More backstage Tekton Pipelines vulnerabilities
- TI-2026-29590 Tekton Pipelines: Git Resolver Unsanitized Revision Parameter Enables git Argument Injection Leading to RCE CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.5
- TI-2026-29578 Tekton Pipelines: HTTP Resolver Unbounded Response Body Read Enables Denial of Service via Memory Exhaustion CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 6.5
- TI-2026-25632 Tekton Pipelines git resolver has path traversal that allows reading arbitrary files from the resolver pod CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.6
- TI-2026-28976 Tekton Pipelines: Git resolver API mode leaks system-configured API token to user-controlled serverURL CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.7
- TI-2026-25468 Tekton Pipelines: Controller can panic when setting long resolver names in TaskRun/PipelineRun CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 6.5
- TI-2026-20651 Tekton Pipelines: VerificationPolicy regex pattern bypass via substring matching CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 6.5
Sources
- CVE-2023-37264 · CVE Program
- CVE-2023-37264 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-w2h3-vvvq-3m53 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2023-37264 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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