CVE-2026-42876 PUBLISHED

External Secrets Operator: Priviledge escalation with secret overwriting

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 30.04.2026 Published: 11.05.2026 Updated: 11.05.2026

External Secrets Operator reads information from a third-party service and automatically injects the values as Kubernetes Secrets. Prior to 2.4.1, a user who only has permission to create ExternalSecret resources can cause the operator to create a Secret that Kubernetes will automatically populate with a long-lived token for the specified service account. This effectively allows the user to impersonate any service account in the namespace without needing direct create permissions on TokenRequest or Secrets of that type. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.4.1.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
CVSS Score: 4.9

Product Status

Vendor external-secrets
Product external-secrets
Versions
  • Version < 2.4.1 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-285: Improper Authorization CWE