Summary

A validation bypass in the VolumeMount path restriction allows mounting
volumes under restricted /tekton/ internal paths by using .. path
traversal components. The restriction check uses strings.HasPrefix
without filepath.Clean, so a path like /tekton/home/../results
passes validation but resolves to /tekton/results at runtime.

Details

Tekton Pipelines restricts VolumeMount paths under /tekton/ (except
/tekton/home) to prevent users from interfering with internal
execution state. The validation at
pkg/apis/pipeline/v1/container_validation.go checks mount paths using
strings.HasPrefix without normalizing the path first:

if strings.HasPrefix(vm.MountPath, "/tekton/") &&
    !strings.HasPrefix(vm.MountPath, "/tekton/home") {
    // reject
}

Because /tekton/home is an allowed prefix, a path like
/tekton/home/../results passes both checks. At runtime, the container
runtime resolves .. and the actual mount point becomes
/tekton/results.

The same pattern exists in pkg/apis/pipeline/v1beta1/task_validation.go.

Impact

An authenticated user with Task or TaskRun creation permissions can
mount volumes over internal Tekton paths, potentially:

• Writing fake task results that downstream pipelines trust
• Reading or modifying step scripts before execution
• Interfering with entrypoint coordination state

Patches

(to be filled: fixed in versions X.Y.Z)

Workarounds

• Use admission controllers (OPA/Gatekeeper, Kyverno) to validate that
  VolumeMount paths do not contain .. components.
• In multi-tenant setups, restrict who can create Task and TaskRun
  resources via RBAC.

Affected Versions

All versions through v1.10.0 (both v1 and v1beta1 APIs).

Acknowledgments

This vulnerability was reported by @kodareef5.

References

• GHSA-rx35-6rhx-7858
• https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/releases/tag/v1.11.1
• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-40923