{"id":"CVE-2026-42876","title":"External Secrets Operator: Privilege escalation with secret overwriting","summary":"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 t…","severity":"medium","cvss":4.9,"cvssVector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N","cvssSource":"cna","cwe":["CWE-285"],"vendor":"external-secrets","product":"external-secrets","affected":["external-secrets < 2.4.1"],"ssvc":{"exploitation":"none","automatable":"no","technicalImpact":"partial","timestamp":"2026-05-12T13:26:08.541848Z"},"published":"2026-05-11","updated":"2026-10-06","sourceUpdated":"2026-10-06T15:30:23.871Z","source":"CVEORG","sourceUrl":"https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-42876","references":[{"url":"https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/security/advisories/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22","label":"https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/security/advisories/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22"},{"url":"https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/commit/4ddd240af7fe88725d9857b9a0c198073502e288","label":"https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/commit/4ddd240af7fe88725d9857b9a0c198073502e288"},{"url":"https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/releases/tag/v2.4.1","label":"https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/releases/tag/v2.4.1"}],"tags":["cve.org"],"epss":0.00257,"epssPercentile":0.15823,"ingestedAt":"2026-10-06T16:04:04.485Z","slug":"CVE-2026-42876","body":"## Overview\n\nExternal 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.\n\n## Affected\n\n- `external-secrets < 2.4.1`\n\n## Remediation\n\nRefer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.","depth":"sunlit","depthScore":27,"depthScoreParts":{"impact":27,"likelihood":0.1,"exploitation":0,"ransomware":0},"changes":[]}