Introduction
A critical input validation flaw in Spinnaker's clouddriver component lets any authenticated user with low privileges execute arbitrary commands on clouddriver pods by crafting malicious values in gitrepo artifact configuration fields. Spinnaker orchestrates deployments across multiple cloud providers, so the damage from a compromised clouddriver can spread well past a single pod, into credential theft, file destruction, and unauthorized resource injection across every cloud environment the platform manages.
Spinnaker is an open-source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform originally developed by Netflix, which publicly states that Spinnaker powers the vast majority of its software deployments. The project is governed by the Continuous Delivery Foundation and is widely adopted by organizations deploying to AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, and other cloud targets. Because it sits at the center of production deployments as a control plane, any RCE vulnerability in the platform is a serious concern for infrastructure security teams.
Technical Information
Root Cause
CVE-2026-32604 is classified under CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation). The vulnerable package is io.spinnaker.clouddriver:clouddriver-artifacts-gitrepo. User-supplied input in the branch and paths fields of gitrepo artifact configurations is not properly sanitized before it is passed to underlying system operations.
How GitRepo Artifacts Work
When a Git repository artifact is requested during normal pipeline execution, Clouddriver does the following:
- Clones the entire Git repository specified in the artifact configuration.
- Sends the artifact contents to the pipeline for use in deployment stages.
- Deletes the cloned repository from the local filesystem.
The branch and path parameters control which branch is checked out and which files are extracted from the repository. These values are incorporated into system-level operations (likely shell commands for git clone and related operations), so unsanitized input in these fields can break out of the intended command context and run attacker-controlled commands on the clouddriver pod.
Attack Flow
Based on the advisory details and the CVSS vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H), exploitation follows these steps:
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Access: An attacker with low-privilege access to the Spinnaker platform (for example, a user who can configure or trigger pipelines) finds a pipeline that uses gitrepo artifact types, or creates a new one.
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Injection: The attacker supplies a crafted value in the branch or paths field of the gitrepo artifact configuration. The value contains shell metacharacters or command injection syntax that the underlying system interprets when Clouddriver processes the artifact.
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Execution: When the pipeline runs and Clouddriver tries to clone the repository using the attacker-controlled branch or path value, the injected commands execute with the privileges of the clouddriver process on the pod.
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Impact: From the clouddriver pod, the attacker can:
- expose the credentials Clouddriver typically holds for multiple cloud providers, which can be read from environment variables, mounted secrets, or configuration files
- delete critical configuration or runtime files on the pod, disrupting operations
- use the cloud provider credentials accessible from the pod to inject resources, creating, modifying, or deleting them in any cloud environment managed by Spinnaker
Scope and Severity
The CVSS 3.1 base score is 9.9 (the GitHub Security Advisory rates it at 10.0). The scope metric is "Changed" because compromising the clouddriver component grants access to resources well beyond the pod itself, specifically the cloud accounts and environments that Spinnaker is configured to manage. With a network attack vector, low complexity, low privileges required, and no user interaction, the vulnerability is straightforward to exploit for anyone with basic access to a Spinnaker instance.
Affected Systems and Versions
The vulnerability affects the io.spinnaker.clouddriver:clouddriver-artifacts-gitrepo package in Spinnaker. All versions prior to the following patched releases are vulnerable:
- All versions prior to 2025.3.2 in the 2025.3.x release line
- All versions prior to 2025.4.2 in the 2025.4.x release line
- All versions prior to 2026.0.1 in the 2026.0.x release line
- All versions prior to 2026.1.0 in the 2026.1.x release line
The vulnerability is only exploitable in environments where gitrepo artifact types are enabled. Deployments that do not use gitrepo artifacts are not affected, and disabling this artifact type is a viable workaround.
Organizations should upgrade to one of the patched versions listed above. Release notes for versions 2025.3.2 and 2025.4.2 explicitly list a fix labeled "gitrepo: Fix git repo validation."
Vendor Security History
The Spinnaker maintainers released patches quickly across four concurrent version lines, which shows a mature and responsive security process. The project's governance under the Continuous Delivery Foundation and its origins at Netflix contribute to a security posture with a pattern of prompt remediation when issues are identified, though the project is not immune to vulnerabilities.
References
- GitHub Security Advisory GHSA-x3j7-7pgj-h87r
- Spinnaker Release 2025.3.2
- Spinnaker Release 2025.4.2
- Spinnaker Release 2026.0.1
- Spinnaker GitHub Repository
- Clouddriver GitHub Repository
- Spinnaker GitRepo Artifact Configuration Documentation
- Spinnaker Official Website
- CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog
