What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2021-21423: Exposure of Version-Control Repository to an Unauthorized Control Sphere in projen
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 1.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2021-04-06 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-527
Description
`projen` is a project generation tool that synthesizes project configuration files such as `package.json`, `tsconfig.json`, `.gitignore`, GitHub Workflows, `eslint`, `jest`, and more, from a well-typed definition written in JavaScript. Users of projen's `NodeProject` project type (including any project type derived from it) include a `.github/workflows/rebuild-bot.yml` workflow that may allow any GitHub user to trigger execution of un-trusted code in the context of the "main" repository (as opposed to that of a fork). In some situations, such untrusted code may potentially be able to commit to the "main" repository. The rebuild-bot workflow is triggered by comments including `@projen rebuild` on pull-request to trigger a re-build of the projen project, and updating the pull request with the updated files. This workflow is triggered by an `issue_comment` event, and thus always executes with a `GITHUB_TOKEN` belonging to the repository into which the pull-request is made (this is in contrast with workflows triggered by `pull_request` events, which always execute with a `GITHUB_TOKEN` belonging to the repository from which the pull-request is made). Repositories that do not have branch protection configured on their default branch (typically `main` or `master`) could possibly allow an untrusted user to gain access to secrets configured on the repository (such as NPM tokens, etc). Branch protection prohibits this escalation, as the managed `GITHUB_TOKEN` would not be able to modify the contents of a protected branch and affected workflows must be defined on the default branch.
Affected products
- projen: from 0.6.0 before 0.16.41 — fixed in 0.16.41
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: projen 0.16.41. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- https://github.com/projen/projen/commit/36030c6a4b1acd0054673322612e7c70e9446643
- https://github.com/projen/projen/security/advisories/GHSA-gg2g-m5wc-vccq
- https://www.npmjs.com/package/projen
- https://github.com/projen/projen/commit/36030c6a4b1acd0054673322612e7c70e9446643
- https://github.com/projen/projen/security/advisories/GHSA-gg2g-m5wc-vccq
- https://www.npmjs.com/package/projen
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