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Security researchers at Wiz disclosed a critical AWS CodeBuild misconfiguration (dubbed CodeBreach) that could have enabled unauthenticated attackers to trigger CI builds from untrusted pull requests, access the build environment, and exfiltrate privileged credentials such as GitHub admin tokens. With those tokens, an attacker could have pushed malicious commits into AWS-managed open-source repositories—creating a high-impact software supply chain pathway that could have cascaded into widespread compromise, including risk to dependencies like the AWS JavaScript SDK and potentially components used by the AWS Console itself. AWS was notified on 2025-08-25 and remediated the issue in September 2025.
The root cause was described as a weakness in CodeBuild’s webhook filtering logic intended to restrict which events/users can trigger builds; affected repositories used an ACTOR_ID regex filter that omitted the ^ and $ anchors, allowing bypass of the intended match constraints. Reported impacted AWS-managed GitHub repositories included aws-sdk-js-v3, aws-lc, amazon-corretto-crypto-provider, and awslabs/open-data-registry, all configured to run builds on pull requests. Separate reporting on abuse of self-hosted GitHub Actions runners as backdoors (including the Shai-Hulud worm technique) is related at a thematic CI/CD level but does not describe the CodeBuild misconfiguration or the AWS repository takeover scenario.
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Wiz publicly revealed that the CodeBuild misconfiguration could have enabled takeover of AWS-managed GitHub repositories, including the AWS SDK for JavaScript, creating potential for a major supply-chain compromise. The researchers described how a malicious pull request could expose privileged GitHub tokens and enable repository-admin actions.
In September 2025, AWS completed broader fixes for the affected CodeBuild project configurations, added mitigations, and rotated exposed credentials. AWS said it found no customer impact and no evidence of in-the-wild exploitation.
Within 48 hours of Wiz's disclosure, AWS mitigated the core bypass that allowed malicious GitHub actor IDs to match approved IDs as substrings. This reduced the immediate risk of unauthorized build triggering against affected projects.
Wiz responsibly disclosed a critical AWS CodeBuild misconfiguration dubbed 'CodeBreach' to AWS on 2025-08-25. The flaw involved unanchored regular expressions in webhook ACTOR_ID filters, creating a path to bypass trusted-actor restrictions and potentially access privileged GitHub credentials.
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Researchers reported that the `prt-scan` campaign abused misconfigured GitHub Actions workflows using the `pull_request_target` trigger to run attacker-controlled code from forked pull requests in privileged CI contexts. The actor used at least six GitHub accounts to submit more than 500 malicious pull requests across six waves, disguising many as routine CI updates and tailoring payloads to Python, Node.js, Go, Rust, and GitHub Actions repositories. Wiz said the operation evolved from simple bash payloads into AI-assisted, repository-aware implants designed to steal `GITHUB_TOKEN` values, enumerate secrets, probe cloud metadata services, and exfiltrate credentials through workflow logs and pull request comments. The campaign succeeded often enough to cause real supply-chain impact despite an estimated success rate below 10%. Wiz confirmed compromise of the npm packages **`@codfish/eslint-config`** and **`@codfish/actions`** across 106 versions, and verified theft of AWS keys, Cloudflare API tokens, and Netlify authentication tokens. High-profile projects including Sentry, OpenSearch, IPFS, NixOS, Jina AI, and recharts reportedly blocked the attempts through contributor approval gates and workflow restrictions. The activity follows earlier warnings from Sysdig that insecure use of `pull_request_target` in prominent repositories such as MITRE, Splunk, and Spotipy could expose secrets and high-privilege `GITHUB_TOKEN` permissions, underscoring that unsafe GitHub Actions defaults remain an active software supply-chain risk.
Jun 29, 2026
Researchers at Novee disclosed **Cordyceps**, a class of systemic software supply chain flaws in GitHub Actions workflows that can let attackers hijack build and release pipelines through insecure trust-boundary crossings in CI/CD YAML configurations. The attack chains combine issues such as command injection, broken authentication logic, artifact poisoning, and privilege escalation across multiple workflows rather than a single misconfiguration. Novee said exploitation may require only a pull request or even a pull request comment from a free GitHub account, allowing low-privilege or unauthenticated attackers to execute malicious code, steal credentials, and potentially gain control of code repositories and connected cloud environments. After scanning roughly **30,000** high-impact repositories, Novee flagged **654** projects and verified more than **300** as fully exploitable. Confirmed impact included repositories tied to **Microsoft, Google, Apache, Cloudflare,** and the **Python Software Foundation**, with examples including Azure Sentinel, Google `adk-samples`, Apache Doris, Black, and Cloudflare Workers tooling. The researchers said affected organizations have fixed the disclosed issues, but warned that AI coding agents are helping spread the same insecure CI/CD patterns across ecosystems including **npm, PyPI, crates,** and **Go**.
Jul 12, 2026
A documented AWS attack path shows how an attacker can escalate privileges by combining **SSRF**, exposed EC2 instance credentials, and a misconfigured **CodeBuild** project that reads its `buildspec` from an attacker-writable **S3** bucket. In the reported scenario, the attacker first used Server-Side Request Forgery against an EC2 instance’s **IMDSv1** metadata service to obtain temporary AWS credentials, then enumerated access and found permissions including `codebuild:StartBuild` and `s3:PutObject`. Without needing `iam:PassRole` or permission to modify CodeBuild projects directly, the attacker altered the S3-hosted build specification and triggered a new build, causing arbitrary commands to run on the CodeBuild worker. That execution exposed the worker’s AWS credentials, which inherited the project’s assigned role and in the described case led to a more privileged role with `iam:*` permissions. The technique highlights how cloud misconfigurations can turn limited access into broad account compromise, and underscores mitigations including **least privilege**, tighter S3 and CodeBuild controls, and use of **IMDSv2** to reduce SSRF impact on EC2 instances.
Jul 25, 2026