GHSA-69fq-xp46-6x23: 
vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Summary

On March 19, 2026, a threat actor used compromised credentials to publish a malicious Trivy v0.69.4 release, force-push 76 of 77 version tags in aquasecurity/trivy-action to credential-stealing malware, and replace all 7 tags in aquasecurity/setup-trivy with malicious commits. On March 22, 2026, a threat actor used compromised credentials to publish a malicious Trivy v0.69.5 and v0.69.6 DockerHub images.

Exposure Window

Affected Components

Note that all malicious components, artifacts, commits, etc have been removed from all sources and destinations (yet they may linger in intermediary caches). Use this information to understand if you have been exposed to the malicious artifacts during the exposure window.

trivy binary and image

You are affected if you used:

1. trivy binaries version v0.69.4 (or latest during the exposure window) distributed via GitHub, Deb, RPM.
2. trivy container images v0.69.4 (or latest during the exposure window) distributed via GHCR, ECR public, Docker Hub.
3. trivy container images v0.69.5 and v0.69.6 (or latest during the exposure window) distributed via Docker Hub.You are not affected if you used:
4. trivy (binary or image) version v0.69.3 or earlier.
   1. v0.69.3 is protected by GitHub's immutable releases feature (enabled March 3, before v0.69.3 was published).
   2. v0.69.2 predates immutable releases enablement but integrity can be verified via sigstore signatures (see "How to Verify" section below).
5. trivy images referenced by digest.
6. trivy binaries built from source.
   1. The malicious code was not committed to Trivy's main branch. It was fetched and built on the ephemeral runner, and also committed to a v0.70.0 branch but no release or git tag was ever pushed.
7. homebrew from official formula (brew install trivy)
   1. The official homebrew formula is building trivy directly from source.
   2. There's an additional custom trivy tap which was compromised as part of the v0.69.4 release, but that tap requires special installation and is not even mentioned in the trivy documentation.

aquasecurity/trivy-action GitHub Action

You are affected if you used:

1. Any tags prior except 0.35.0 (0.0.1 – 0.34.2) to reference the action.
2. the action's version: latest parameter explicitly (not the default) during the trivy binary exposure window.
3. SHA pinning to a commit prior to 2025-04-09.
   1. trivy-action started pinning setup-go with pull request trivy-action#456. If you pinned trivy-action to a commit prior to that PR (merged 2025-04-09), then you would get a safe trivy-action but it would get a malicious setup-trivy, if invoked during the setup-trivy exposure window. You are not affected if you used:
4. 0.35.0 tag
   1. 0.35.0 is protected by GitHub's immutable releases feature (enabled March 4, before 0.35.0 was published) and was not affected by the tag hijacking attack.
5. SHA pinning to a safe commit commit after 2025-04-09.

aquasecurity/setup-trivy GitHub Action

You are affected if you used:

1. Any version without pinning.You are not affected if you used:
2. SHA pinning to a safe commit.

Attack Details

Root Cause

This incident is a continuation of the supply chain attack that began in late February 2026. Following the initial disclosure on March 1, credential rotation was performed but was not atomic (not all credentials were revoked simultaneously). The attacker could have use a valid token to exfiltrate newly rotated secrets during the rotation window (which lasted a few days). This could have allowed the attacker to retain access and execute the March 19 attack.

Trivy v0.69.4 binary and container images

The attacker created a malicious release by:

1. Pushing a commit (1885610c) that swapped the actions/checkout reference to an imposter commit (70379aad) containing a composite action that downloaded malicious Go source files from a typosquatted domain
2. Adding --skip=validate to goreleaser to bypass binary validation
3. Tagging this commit as v0.69.4, triggering the release pipelineThe compromised release was distributed across Trivy's regular distribution channels channels: GHCR, ECR Public, Docker Hub (both 0.69.4 and latest tags), deb/rpm packages, and get.trivy.dev.The attacker attempted to release a v0.70.0 malicious release but that was stopped prematurely.

trivy-action tag hijacking

The attacker force-pushed 76 of 77 version tags to malicious commits that injected an infostealer into entrypoint.sh. The malicious code executes before the legitimate Trivy scan and does the following:

1. Dumps Runner.Worker process memory via /proc/<pid>/mem to extract secrets. Sweeps 50+ filesystem paths for SSH keys, AWS/GCP/Azure credentials, Kubernetes tokens, Docker configs, .env files, database credentials, and cryptocurrency wallets.
2. Encrypts collected data using AES-256-CBC with RSA-4096 hybrid encryption.
3. Transmits to attacker-controlled infrastructure. If exfiltration fails and INPUT_GITHUB_PAT is set, creates a public tpcp-docs repository on the victim's GitHub account and uploads stolen data as a release asset.

setup-trivy release replacement

All 7 existing tags (v0.2.0 – v0.2.6) were force-pushed to malicious commits. The malicious action.yaml contained the same infostealer as trivy-action, injected as a "Setup environment" step that executes before the legitimate Trivy installation. We have removed all malicious releases within ~4 hours and re-created v0.2.6 with safe content. Tags v0.2.0 – v0.2.5 were not restored.

Trivy v0.69.5 and v0.69.6 docker image published.

The attacker created aquasec/trivy:0.69.5 and aquasec/trivy:0.69.6 with the same C2 domain as the v0.69.4 payload, and pushed them directly to Docker Hub using separately-compromised Docker Hub credentials (not via GitHub). No corresponding GitHub tags or releases existed. We have removed all tags related to 0.69.5 and 0.69.6 and restored the latest tag to the safe 0.69.3 tag.

Recommended Actions

Update to Known-Safe Versions

Rotate All Potentially Exposed Secrets

Based on information shared above, if there is any possibility that a compromised version ran in your environment, all secrets accessible to affected pipelines must be treated as exposed and rotated immediately.

Audit Trivy Versions

Check whether your organization pulled or executed Trivy v0.69.4 from any source. Remove any affected artifacts immediately.

Audit GitHub Action References

Review all workflows using aquasecurity/trivy-action or aquasecurity/setup-trivy. Check workflow run logs from March 19–20, 2026 for signs of compromise.

Search for Exfiltration Artifacts

Look for repositories named tpcp-docs in your GitHub organization. The presence of such a repository may indicate that the fallback exfiltration mechanism was triggered and secrets were successfully stolen.

Pin GitHub Actions to Full SHA Hashes

Pin GitHub Actions to full, immutable commit SHA hashes, don't use mutable version tags. As described here: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/security/secure-use#using-third-party-actions

How to Verify Existing Installations

Binary verification

# Download binary and sigstore bundle
curl -sLO "https://github.com/aquasecurity/trivy/releases/download/v0.69.2/trivy_0.69.2_Linux-64bit.tar.gz"
curl -sLO "https://github.com/aquasecurity/trivy/releases/download/v0.69.2/trivy_0.69.2_Linux-64bit.tar.gz.sigstore.json"

# Verify signature
$ cosign verify-blob \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github\.com/aquasecurity/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  --bundle trivy_0.69.2_Linux-64bit.tar.gz.sigstore.json \
  trivy_0.69.2_Linux-64bit.tar.gz
Verified OK

# Check signing timestamp
$ date -u -d @$(jq -r '.verificationMaterial.tlogEntries[].integratedTime' trivy_0.69.2_Linux-64bit.tar.gz.sigstore.json)
Sat Mar  1 19:11:02 UTC 2026

# ✅ Signed on Mar 1, before the attack on Mar 19

Container image verification

# Verify signature and get image digest
$ cosign verify \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github\.com/aquasecurity/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  --new-bundle-format \
  ghcr.io/aquasecurity/trivy:0.69.2
Verification for ghcr.io/aquasecurity/trivy:0.69.2 --
The following checks were performed on each of these signatures:
  - The cosign claims were validated
  - Existence of the claims in the transparency log was verified offline
  - The code-signing certificate was verified using trusted certificate authority certificates

# Get digest and check all signing timestamps via Rekor
$ DIGEST=$(cosign verify \
  --certificate-identity-regexp 'https://github\.com/aquasecurity/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com' \
  --new-bundle-format -o json ghcr.io/aquasecurity/trivy:0.69.2 2>/dev/null | \
  jq -r '.[0].critical.image."docker-manifest-digest"')
$ rekor-cli search --sha "$DIGEST" | grep -v 'Found' | while read uuid; do
    rekor-cli get --uuid "$uuid" | grep IntegratedTime
  done
IntegratedTime: 2026-03-01T19:13:52Z
IntegratedTime: 2026-03-01T19:13:47Z
IntegratedTime: 2026-03-01T19:13:57Z
IntegratedTime: 2026-03-01T19:13:54Z
IntegratedTime: 2026-03-01T19:13:46Z
IntegratedTime: 2026-03-01T19:13:37Z

# ✅ All signed on Mar 1, before the attack on Mar 19

Indicators of Compromise

Executable binaries

Container images (v0.69.4)

Network

C2/sinks:

• scan.aquasecurtiy.org
• 45.148.10.212

GitHub Repositories

Public repo on victim's GitHub account with tpcp-docs- prefix. Stolen data uploaded as a release asset with tag data-<timestamp>.