A privilege escalation vulnerability affects Woodpecker instances using the Kubernetes backend.
The pipeline option backend_options.kubernetes.serviceAccountName was passed directly to the pod spec without any admin gating.
Who is impacted: any operator running the Kubernetes backend. Any user with Push permission on a connected repository can run pipeline pods under an arbitrary ServiceAccount in the pipeline namespace, gaining that account's RBAC permissions. If a privileged ServiceAccount is reachable in that namespace, this can lead to secret exfiltration (database credentials, API keys, TLS certs) and full cluster takeover.
https://github.com/woodpecker-ci/woodpecker/pull/6792
Operators who cannot upgrade immediately can mitigate by any of:
default ServiceAccount minimally privileged.serviceAccountName.609ba481b5e912f59aaae8ca7bc22b44523c5e37v1.0.0 through v3.15.0pipeline/backend/kubernetes/backend_options.go (field ServiceAccountName),
pipeline/backend/kubernetes/pod.go (assigned to pod spec with no gating){
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-269",
"CWE-862"
],
"github_reviewed": true,
"github_reviewed_at": "2026-07-14T20:29:32Z",
"nvd_published_at": null,
"severity": "HIGH"
}