Vulnerability · Published May 11, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-42876External Secrets Operator: Privilege escalation with secret overwriting
Medium 4.9
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in external-secrets from external-secrets. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 12% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official 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.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/apis | 2.4.1 | GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22 |
| Go | github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/apis | no fix listed | GO-2026-5377 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| external-secrets | external-secrets | < 2.4.1 |
Weakness: CWE-285 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
References
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/security/advisories/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22 x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/commit/4ddd240af7fe88725d9857b9a0c198073502e288 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/releases/tag/v2.4.1 x_refsource_MISC