Exclude GITHUB_WORKSPACE and relative entries from PATH walk (#558)

* Exclude GITHUB_WORKSPACE and relative entries from PATH walk

resolveExecutable previously walked any directory listed in process.env.PATH,
which trusts that nothing earlier in the workflow prepended an
attacker-controlled location. A malicious PR could land bin/npx in the repo
and add `echo "$GITHUB_WORKSPACE/bin" >> $GITHUB_PATH` to a prior step,
causing pullfrog to exec the attacker's binary with our scoped tokens in env.

Filter out (a) any non-absolute PATH entry (., bin, .., etc., which resolve
against cwd) and (b) any entry equal to or under GITHUB_WORKSPACE. The walk
then continues to the next legitimate system tooling dir.

* Address PR #558 review: comment typo + Windows case bypass

- Drop double space in the threat-model comment.
- Lowercase paths on Windows before comparing against GITHUB_WORKSPACE.
  Without this, an attacker can bypass the filter by varying case in their
  injected PATH entry (`d:\a\repo\bin` vs `D:\a\repo`) — string compare
  misses but NTFS still resolves the executable inside the workspace.
This commit is contained in:
Colin McDonnell
2026-05-03 17:33:13 +00:00
committed by pullfrog[bot]
parent 55c95e6f50
commit 6607112d0b
+38 -2
View File
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
import { execFileSync } from "node:child_process";
import { accessSync, constants, existsSync } from "node:fs";
import { delimiter, dirname, join } from "node:path";
import { delimiter, dirname, isAbsolute, join, resolve, sep } from "node:path";
import { fileURLToPath } from "node:url";
import actionPackageJson from "./package.json" with { type: "json" };
@@ -42,9 +42,45 @@ function canAccessExecutable(path: string): boolean {
}
}
// reject PATH entries that an attacker can plausibly write to before pullfrog
// runs. specifically: relative entries (., bin, etc., which resolve against
// cwd), and anything inside the customer's checkout. an attacker who can land
// a malicious `npx` in the repo and prepend `$GITHUB_WORKSPACE/bin` to
// `GITHUB_PATH` from a prior workflow step would otherwise get full code
// execution under our action token.
//
// on Windows the filesystem is case-insensitive but `resolve()` preserves
// input case, so we lowercase both sides before comparing — otherwise an
// attacker can bypass the filter by varying the case of GITHUB_WORKSPACE in
// their injected PATH entry (`d:\a\repo` vs `D:\a\repo`).
function normalizePathForCompare(path: string): string {
return process.platform === "win32" ? resolve(path).toLowerCase() : resolve(path);
}
function isUntrustedPathEntry(entry: string, untrustedRoots: string[]): boolean {
if (!isAbsolute(entry)) return true;
const normalized = normalizePathForCompare(entry);
for (const root of untrustedRoots) {
if (normalized === root) return true;
if (normalized.startsWith(root + sep)) return true;
}
return false;
}
function getUntrustedPathRoots(env: NodeJS.ProcessEnv): string[] {
const roots: string[] = [];
const workspace = env.GITHUB_WORKSPACE;
if (workspace && isAbsolute(workspace)) roots.push(normalizePathForCompare(workspace));
return roots;
}
function resolveExecutable(params: { command: string; env: NodeJS.ProcessEnv }): string | null {
const pathValue = params.env.PATH ?? "";
const pathEntries = pathValue.split(delimiter).filter(Boolean);
const untrustedRoots = getUntrustedPathRoots(params.env);
const pathEntries = pathValue
.split(delimiter)
.filter(Boolean)
.filter((entry) => !isUntrustedPathEntry(entry, untrustedRoots));
const extensions =
process.platform === "win32"
? (params.env.PATHEXT ?? ".COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD").split(";").filter(Boolean)