CVE-2026-42876External Secrets Operator: Privilege escalation with secret overwriting
- 4.9MediumCVSS base score
- 0.21%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 88% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
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.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 11 days later
· 11 days later
Published
- 5 months later
· 5 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | Medium4.9 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Deferred | 3.1 | Medium4.9 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.21% · top 88% of all CVEs (13 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 4.9.
Affected products
external-secrets · external-secrets
- affected < 2.4.1
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Gogithub.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/apisGHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22 (opens in a new tab)
References
References3
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/security/advisories/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/commit/4ddd240af7fe88725d9857b9a0c198073502e288 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/releases/tag/v2.4.1 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISC
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-29191 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22 (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-42876)Record last updated .