The person that found this is a hero.

Whenever I see slightly weird behaviour, there is a temptation to just move on because there isn't enough time, running software is complicated, and there is something else I want to do. I will try to change my attitude in future in case it uncovers a backdoor like this -- it would be educational too.

The manifest of my Kubernetes cluster is managed in a Git repository and is automatically deployed via a GitOps tool named Flux CD. When I push changes to the repository, such as adding a new application or upgrading Docker images, the deployment occurs within a few minutes.

This is the way.

Although I use Flux ImageUpdateAutomation instead of Renovate Bot. Did you consider using Flux to do auto updates? Are there any downsides that made you choose Renovate Bot instead?

For a fun comparison, a reasonable 1TB USB Stick costs slightly less than 1TB of AWS egress.