What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-61549: Woodpecker: Privilege escalation via unrestricted serviceAccountName in the Kubernetes backend

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.0 v4.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-09-15 · updated 2026-09-30
• Weakness: CWE-269

Description

Woodpecker is a CI/CD engine. From 1.0.0 until 3.16.0, pipeline/backend/kubernetes/backend_options.go defines backend_options.kubernetes.serviceAccountName, and the Kubernetes backend in pipeline/backend/kubernetes/pod.go copies that pipeline-step value directly into the pod specification without administrator authorization. Any user with Push permission on a connected repository can therefore run pipeline pods under an arbitrary ServiceAccount in the pipeline namespace and inherit that account's RBAC permissions. When a privileged ServiceAccount is reachable, the attacker can exfiltrate secrets such as database credentials, API keys, and TLS certificates and may take over the cluster. This issue is fixed in version 3.16.0.

Affected products

• woodpecker-ci woodpecker: from 1.0.0, < 3.16.0

References

• https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/commit/5df9d52260626c074c6caafb2dc83d3bc6b53be1
• https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/commit/609ba481b5e912f59aaae8ca7bc22b44523c5e37
• https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/pull/6792
• https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/releases/tag/v3.16.0
• https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/security/advisories/GHSA-qf34-295c-26v8

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