Poisoned Pipeline / Techniques / T0118
Command injection
OS command injection is a web security vulnerability that allows an attacker to execute arbitrary operating system commands on the server that is running an application.
Command injection attacks are possible when an application passes unsafe user supplied data (forms, cookies, HTTP headers etc.) to a system shell.
In this attack, the attacker-supplied operating system commands are usually executed with the privileges of the vulnerable application.
Command injection attacks are possible largely due to insufficient input validation
Where this idea came from
Nx s1ngularity PR-title injection, Antrea Job DSL eval, prt-scan payloads; conference: Black Hat USA 2026 “GitHub Can Tell You’re Being Hacked” (Weinberger/Weizman, Microsoft) covers Actions event-stream detection of exactly these patterns.
- https://owasp.org/www-community/attacks/Command_Injection
- https://portswigger.net/web-security/os-command-injection
- https://www.blackhat.com/us-26/briefings/schedule/index.html
Mitigations
- M1180 Avoid calling OS commands directly
- M1181 Use parametrization with input validation
- M1182 Implement least privilege
- M1720 Implement regular patches and updates
Detections
- D1170 Configure application audit logs to detect injection attacks
- D1171 Implement Web Application Firewall
Observed in incidents (6)
- 36 malicious Strapi plugin packages (Redis RCE / DB theft)
- Nx s1ngularity (stolen npm token via Actions injection)
- Laravel Lang RCE backdoor across 700+ versions
- Codecov Breach
- hackerbot-claw autonomous GitHub Actions exploitation
- CNCF Antrea Jenkins slash-command credential theft