GitHub Agentic Workflows Vulnerability Exposed
GitHub's Agentic Workflows, a new AI-powered automation system, has been found vulnerable to a prompt injection attack, allowing attackers to silently pull data from private repositories by posting a crafted GitHub Issue. The vulnerability, named GitLost, was discovered by Noma Labs and affects unauthenticated attackers. GitHub has not commented on the issue, and its impact on users remains unclear.
Key points
- Noma Labs discovered a critical vulnerability in GitHub's Agentic Workflows, allowing unauthenticated attackers to pull data from private repositories.
- The vulnerability, named GitLost, was achieved by posting a crafted GitHub Issue in a public repository belonging to the same organization as the private repositories.
- GitHub Agentic Workflows pair GitHub Actions with an AI agent backed by Claude or GitHub Copilot, allowing teams to write workflows in plain Markdown.
- The vulnerability demonstrates a textbook indirect prompt-injection attack, where malicious instructions are hidden inside content read by the AI agent.
- GitHub has not commented on the issue, and its impact on users remains unclear.
GitHub's Agentic Workflows, a new AI-powered automation system, has been found vulnerable to a prompt injection attack. The vulnerability, named GitLost, was discovered by Noma Labs and affects unauthenticated attackers.
The vulnerability was achieved by posting a crafted GitHub Issue in a public repository belonging to the same organization as the private repositories. This allowed the attackers to silently pull data from the private repositories.
GitHub Agentic Workflows pair GitHub Actions with an AI agent backed by Claude or GitHub Copilot. This allows teams to write workflows in plain Markdown, and the GitHub agent reads issues, calls tools, and responds on its own.
The vulnerability demonstrates a textbook indirect prompt-injection attack, where malicious instructions are hidden inside content read by the AI agent. This type of attack quietly sends private data to anyone on the internet.
GitHub has not commented on the issue, and its impact on users remains unclear. The company has not disclosed whether it has patched the vulnerability or is working on a fix.
Sources
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