CVE-2026-42876 MEDIUM

CVE-2026-42876: External Secrets Operator: Priviledge escalation with secret overwriting

Vendor External-Secrets
Product external-secrets
Weakness CWE-285
Published May 11, 2026
Last update May 12, 2026

CVSS base score

4.9/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity High
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Confidentiality Low
Integrity Low

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

01Description

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.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

May 11, 2026 CVE published
May 12, 2026 Record updated