Summary
@hulumi/policies bypasses policy packs with a forged Pulumi-URN logical name
Affected: @hulumi/policies < 1.4.0, Fixed in: 1.4.0, Severity: High, CWE-693 (Protection Mechanism Failure)
Pulumi gives every cloud resource a structured URN that includes the resource's type chain (hulumi:baseline:aws:SecureBucket$aws:s3/bucketV2:BucketV2) and the logical name the developer freely chose (anything after the final ::). Several Hulumi policy rules used the URN to grant exemptions, for example, "if this raw bucket is a child of SecureBucket, skip the raw-bucket rule because the parent component handles hardening."
The bug: the rules looked for a substring like hulumi:baseline:aws:SecureBucket$ anywhere in the URN. That substring can also appear in the developer-controlled logical-name portion. A developer (or compromised PR) could simply name a raw resource so its logical name carried the trusted substring, and every rule that used this check would treat the resource as if it were inside the trusted parent and skip its hardening check.
Codex reported this for DEPLOY_GOV_1; the same anti-pattern existed in five more packs (unreported but identically exploitable): AWS H4/H5 sibling lookups, GitHub H1, GitHub H2, Cloudflare CF_DNS_1, Cloudflare CF_DNSSEC_1, and (advisory-level) CIS v5 §2.1.1 + §2.1.5.
Workarounds
None reliable, a local lint that rejects logical names containing $ would catch the trivial form of the spoof but not crafted variants.
Resources
- PR #178 (Cluster B); the URN-anchoring refactor and per-pack spoof-vector regression tests in
packages/policies/tests/.
Impact
Consumers using @hulumi/policies could ship raw aws:s3:Bucket, github:Repository, cloudflare:Zone, cloudflare:DnsRecord, and similar resources that bypassed mandatory hardening checks by naming themselves with a trusted substring. Every affected rule appeared to pass while the resource had none of the expected defaults.
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
Already deployed Kodem?
See it in your environmentNew to Kodem? Get a demo →Remediation advice
Upgrade to @hulumi/[email protected]. A new shared helper at packages/policies/src/urn.ts parses Pulumi URNs structurally and only looks for the trusted parent-type token inside the URN's type-chain segment, never inside the developer-controlled logical name. All six prior call sites have been migrated to it.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2026-48033? CVE-2026-48033 is a high-severity security vulnerability in @hulumi/policies (npm), affecting versions < 1.4.0. It is fixed in 1.4.0.
- Which versions of @hulumi/policies are affected by CVE-2026-48033? @hulumi/policies (npm) versions < 1.4.0 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-48033? Yes. CVE-2026-48033 is fixed in 1.4.0. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2026-48033 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2026-48033 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether CVE-2026-48033 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix CVE-2026-48033? Upgrade
@hulumi/policiesto 1.4.0 or later.