Summary

When Trivy scans a Helm chart archive (.tgz), its custom tar unpacker reads each entry with io.ReadAll(tr) and no size limit. An attacker who can place a malicious .tgz file in the scanned path can craft a small compressed archive that decompresses to gigabytes, causing the Trivy process to be killed by the OS OOM killer.

Affected configurations

Exploitation requires the attacker to place a crafted .tgz file in a location that Trivy will scan as a Helm chart. This applies to the following scan targets:

| Command | Condition | | --- | --- | | trivy config <dir> | Directory contains a crafted .tgz Helm chart (misconfiguration scanning is always enabled) | | trivy filesystem --scanners misconf <dir> | Directory contains a crafted .tgz Helm chart and --scanners misconf is explicitly enabled | | trivy image --scanners misconf <image> | Image contains a crafted .tgz Helm chart and --scanners misconf is explicitly enabled |

Realistic scenarios include: - A CI pipeline that runs trivy config . on a repository where a contributor can submit a pull request containing a crafted chart archive. - A pipeline that scans a container image with --scanners misconf, whose build context includes untrusted .tgz files.

Impact

An attacker who satisfies the conditions above can exhaust all available memory on the host running Trivy. The OS OOM killer will terminate the Trivy process and may affect other processes sharing the same host or CI runner.

The practical impact in CI environments is denial of service: the scan fails, the pipeline is blocked, and repeated submissions re-trigger the same condition. Cloud CI runners may also incur additional costs for consumed resources.

There is no impact on confidentiality or integrity of the scanned system.

Patches

Fixed in Trivy v0.71.0 (#10718). The custom tar unpacker was replaced with archive.LoadArchiveFiles from the official helm.sh/helm/v4 SDK, which enforces per-entry and total size limits and validates archive structure. Users should upgrade to v0.71.0 or later.

Workarounds

If upgrading is not immediately possible: - Set a memory limit (cgroup/container) on the Trivy process to bound the blast radius. - Use --skip-dirs to exclude directories containing untrusted Helm chart archives from the scan. - Avoid scanning repositories or images with untrusted .tgz files.

Credits

Reported by @jamesgol.

Trivy is a security scanner. Prior to 0.71.1, when Trivy downloads an OCI artifact, it uses the org.opencontainers.image.title annotation from the artifact manifest as the destination filename without validation. An attacker who can make Trivy fetch an attacker-controlled artifact can supply a crafted annotation that resolves to a path outside the intended destination, causing Trivy to write the layer content to an arbitrary location on the host filesystem. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.71.1.

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

| Component | Start (UTC) | End (UTC) | Duration | | ------------- | ---------------------- | ----------------- | --------- | | trivy v0.69.4 | 2026-03-19 18:22 [^1] | 2026-03-19 ~21:42 | ~3 hours | | trivy-action | 2026-03-19 ~17:43 [^2] | 2026-03-20 ~05:40 | ~12 hours | | setup-trivy | 2026-03-19 ~17:43 [^2] | 2026-03-19 ~21:44 | ~4 hours | | dockerhub trivy images v0.69.5 and v0.69.6 | 2026-03-22 15:43 | 2026-03-22 ~01:40 | ~10 hours |

[^1]: Time when v0.69.4 release artifacts became publicly available. The malicious tag was pushed at ~17:43 UTC, triggering the release pipeline. [^2]: Earliest suspicious activity observed in our audit log. 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

Users are affected if they utilized: 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.

Users are not affected if they utilized: 1. 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). 2. trivy images referenced by digest. 4. 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. 5. 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

Users are affected if they utilized: 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.

Users are not affected if they utilized: 1. 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. 2. SHA pinning to a safe commit commit after 2025-04-09.

aquasecurity/setup-trivy GitHub Action

Users are affected if they utilized: 1. Any version without pinning.

Users are not affected if they utilized: 1. 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 pipeline

The 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 INPUTGITHUBPAT 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

| Component | Safe Version | | ------------ | ---------------- | | Trivy binary | v0.69.2, v0.69.3 | | trivy-action | v0.35.0 | | setup-trivy | v0.2.6 |

Regarding trivy-action: The original tags (0.0.1 – 0.34.2) were deleted during remediation. Because the attacker's force-push caused these tags to be treated as immutable releases by GitHub, they cannot be re-created with the same names. New tags have been published with a v prefix (v0.0.1 – v0.34.2) pointing to the original legitimate commits. Three tags: v0.0.10, v0.34.1, and v0.34.2 have not yet been restored. If you need to reference a version older than 0.35.0, use the v-prefixed tag (e.g., aquasecurity/trivy-action@v0.34.0 instead of @0.34.0). Rotate All Potentially Exposed Secrets

Based on information shared above, if there is any possibility that a compromised version ran in a project's environment, all secrets accessible to affected pipelines must be treated as exposed and rotated immediately. Audit Trivy Versions Check whether a project's 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 project's 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

bash Download binary and sigstore bundle curl -sLO "https://github.com/aquasecurity/trivy/releases/download/v0.69.2/trivy0.69.2Linux-64bit.tar.gz" curl -sLO "https://github.com/aquasecurity/trivy/releases/download/v0.69.2/trivy0.69.2Linux-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 trivy0.69.2Linux-64bit.tar.gz.sigstore.json \ trivy0.69.2Linux-64bit.tar.gz Verified OK

Check signing timestamp $ date -u -d @$(jq -r '.verificationMaterial.tlogEntries[].integratedTime' trivy0.69.2Linux-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

bash 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

Resources

- https://github.com/aquasecurity/trivy/discussions/10425