Snowflake GitHub Actions Flaw Exposes Jira Credentials to Workflow Injection Attacks

A recently disclosed vulnerability in Snowflake's public GitHub repository has raised concerns about the security of GitHub Actions workflows.

The issue, discovered by cybersecurity researchers at Wiz, was present in the `.github/workflows/jira_issue.yml` file, which ran when a public issue was opened. This exposed Jira credentials, including `JIRA_BASE_URL`, `JIRA_USER_EMAIL`, and `JIRA_API_TOKEN`, to the same workflow step.

The vulnerable workflow inserted attacker-controlled issue title and body values directly into a shell `run:` block, which made it susceptible to injection attacks. Furthermore, the workflow checked `github.event.pull_request.user.login`, even though the event was an issue, which meant the referenced pull request property did not exist.

GitHub has stated that if you attempt to dereference a nonexistent property, it will evaluate to an empty string. However, in this case, the comparison against `whitesource-for-github-com[bot]` did not stop an ordinary issue from reaching the job.

Wiz's Red Agent system exploited the injection during authorized security testing after the first payload resulted in a shell syntax error and the system changed its approach. The researchers subsequently received an out-of-band callback from the GitHub Actions runner and obtained the Jira API token used by the workflow.

The token belonged to `qa@snowflake.net` and allowed read access to Jira projects covering engineering, security compliance, and bug bounty tracking on `snowflakecomputing.atlassian.net`. However, the underlying Jira permissions, workflow run, and audit records are not public.

Wiz reported the issue to Snowflake through HackerOne on June 23, 2026, under report #3819931. Snowflake merged a fix that day in pull request #1402, replacing the direct GitHub expression expansion with environment variables that are passed to `jq` as arguments.

The vulnerable workflow had reached the default branch five days earlier, on June 18, when pull request #1218 was merged. The corrected handling remains in the repository's master branch.

Snowflake stated that "our investigation found no evidence of unauthorized access." Wiz also stated that the Jira token was rotated on June 24 and that Snowflake's review found no unrelated external use of it during the five-day exposure window.

The flaw was described by Wiz as resulting from a GitHub Copilot Autofix change. However, the underlying GitHub history does not establish Copilot as the author of the vulnerable `jira_issue.yml` code. The explicit Copilot co-authored commit changed `jira_close.yml`, while the unsafe `jira_issue.yml` refactor appears in a separate August 25, 2025, commit attributed by GitHub to `sfc-gh-hpathak`.

Both changes were later folded into the June 18 squash merge commit, which lists Copilot Autofix among its co-authors. The commit history therefore confirms Copilot participation in pull request #1218, but not authorship of the vulnerable lines.

GitHub had documented this class of workflow injection in July 2025, warning against expanding untrusted issue data directly inside `run:` blocks and recommending the use of intermediate environment variables.

As of August 17, 2026, no CVE, CVSS score, or CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog entry had been located for the issue, and no connector release update tied to it had been identified. The vulnerable interpolation is no longer present on master, and the available primary material does not establish malicious exploitation in the wild or customer compromise.

**Vulnerable Workflow Details**

| Workflow File | Commit Hash | Merge Date | | --- | --- | --- | | `.github/workflows/jira_issue.yml` | 094038e | August 25, 2025 | | `.github/workflows/jira_issue.yml` | 4a1b8ce | June 18, 2026 |

**Timeline of Events**

* June 18, 2026: Pull request #1218 merged, introducing the vulnerable workflow. * June 23, 2026: Wiz reports the issue to Snowflake through HackerOne. * June 24, 2026: Jira token rotated. * June 24, 2026: Snowflake merges a fix in pull request #1402. * August 17, 2026: No CVE, CVSS score, or CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog entry located for the issue.