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.

Project Subscriptions

Vendors Products
External-secrets Subscribe
External-secrets Subscribe
Advisories
Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22 ExternalSecrets vulnerable to privilege escalation with secret overwriting
Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

No workaround given by the vendor.

History

Tue, 12 May 2026 14:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Mon, 11 May 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared External-secrets
External-secrets external-secrets
Vendors & Products External-secrets
External-secrets external-secrets

Mon, 11 May 2026 19:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description 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.
Title External Secrets Operator: Priviledge escalation with secret overwriting
Weaknesses CWE-285
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 4.9, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N'}


Projects

Sign in to view the affected projects.

cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-05-12T13:26:21.683Z

Reserved: 2026-04-30T18:49:06.711Z

Link: CVE-2026-42876

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-05-12T13:26:14.981Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-05-11T20:25:44.307

Modified: 2026-05-11T20:25:44.307

Link: CVE-2026-42876

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-05-11T21:45:35Z

Weaknesses