CVE-2026-42876Published

External Secrets Operator: Privilege escalation with secret overwriting

Collected exploitation and prediction evidence

CISA KEV is observed exploitation evidence. FIRST EPSS is a dated prediction of exploitation in the next 30 days. Missing scores are unknown. This collector requests predictions only for explicit CVE aliases in the public NuGet archive; Microsoft release views retain their existing prediction scope.

No collected risk observation for these identifiers. This does not establish absence of exploitation or a zero probability.

cve-program · CVE-2026-42876

Published

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.

Source published: 11 May 2026 18:58:44 UTC
Source modified: 6 Oct 2026 15:30:23 UTC
Observed here: 23 Oct 2026 15:48:27 UTC
Source terms: CVE Program Terms of Use

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

euvd · EUVD-2026-29191

Published

EUVD source date text has no stated timezone and is retained without inventing a UTC instant. Related bulletin membership is not an alias, common cause or applicability claim. A missing vector with a zero score is treated as unrated. Complete vendor/product and underlying source evidence remains in the original JSON.

Original publisher date fields

datePublished: May 11, 2026, 6:58:44 PM

dateUpdated: Oct 6, 2026, 3:30:23 PM

Source published: May 11, 2026, 6:58:44 PM (timezone not stated)
Source modified: Oct 6, 2026, 3:30:23 PM (timezone not stated)
Observed here: 11 Nov 2026 11:06:58 UTC
Source terms: ENISA EUVD · source terms and attribution apply

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

nvd · CVE-2026-42876

Published

NVD analysis and CPE criteria are source context, not proof that a package or your environment is affected. Complete affected data, logical configurations and SSVC are retained in the original JSON.

Source analysis status: Deferred

Weakness classifications: CWE-285

Original publisher date fields

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

lastModified: 2026-06-17T10:48:32.953

Source published: 11 May 2026 20:25:44 UTC
Source modified: 17 Jun 2026 10:48:32 UTC
Observed here: 25 Oct 2026 10:17:15 UTC
Source terms: NIST NVD usage terms; underlying source attribution retained

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CVSS 3.1 · [email protected] · Secondary · 4.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

osv · GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22

Published

ExternalSecrets allows users to craft Service Account tokens for misconfigured Service Accounts in namespaces the users have access to. ### Impact 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 sepcified 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. The problem is mitigated in severity by the fact that the user must have pre-existing permissions already at almost the same level as the escalation later gives. The attacker cannot use this method to gain access to more information without other things also being misconfigured in the ESO installation. ### Patches Disallow this combination including the bootstrap token secret type. ### Workarounds * Add admission control logic to prevent the use of Templates targeting undesired Types * Remove Service Account Token generation via kube-controller-manager flags * Restrict User RBAC on production clusters and sensitive namespaces

Source published: 8 May 2026 17:24:15 UTC
Source modified: 10 Sep 2026 03:50:46 UTC
Observed here: 24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC
Source terms: GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0

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CVSS_V3 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

Publisher rating · MODERATE

osv · GO-2026-5377

Published

ExternalSecrets vulnerable to privilege escalation with secret overwriting in github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/apis. NOTE: The source advisory for this report contains additional versions that could not be automatically mapped to standard Go module versions. (If this is causing false-positive reports from vulnerability scanners, please suggest an edit to the report.) The additional affected modules and versions are: github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/apis from v0.1.0 before v2.4.1.

Source published: 25 Jun 2026 18:43:19 UTC
Source modified: 25 Jun 2026 19:45:36 UTC
Observed here: 24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC
Source terms: OSV · upstream source license applies

Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON

This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: osv · OSV · upstream source license applies. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.