CVE-2023-49291

CRITICAL 9.8CVE-2023-49291 · Published 05/12/2023 · updated 17/06/2026

In short

CVE-2023-49291 is a CRITICAL (CVSS 9.8) vulnerability affecting branch-names (tj-actions).
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days (EPSS): 1.4%, higher than 73.3% of all vulnerabilities.
Fix: update to 7.0.7, 7.0.0 or later.

Package	Affected versions	Patched versions
branch-names tj-actions	`≥ 7.0.1, < 7.0.7< 7.0.0`	`7.0.77.0.0`

Description

tj-actions/branch-names is a Github action to retrieve branch or tag names with support for all events. The `tj-actions/branch-names` GitHub Actions improperly references the `github.event.pull_request.head.ref` and `github.head_ref` context variables within a GitHub Actions `run` step. The head ref variable is the branch name and can be used to execute arbitrary code using a specially crafted branch name. As a result an attacker can use this vulnerability to steal secrets from or abuse `GITHUB_TOKEN` permissions. This vulnerability has been addressed in version 7.0.7. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

References

tj-actions/branch-names commit 4923d1c · Patch
tj-actions/branch-names commit 6c999ac · Patch
tj-actions/branch-names commit 726fe9b · Patch
tj-actions/branch-names security advisory · Exploit
securitylab.github.com/research/github-actions-untrusted-input · Exploit

Running one of these products? Scan your site to see whether it exposes a vulnerable version.

Scan my site free