4.9

CVE-2026-42876: external-secrets Improper Authorization

CVSS: 4.9v3.1MediumDeferred
AliasesCGA-393w-c67h-r4f7CGA-4gxc-6qv5-x39mCGA-4hqh-772g-rvcf
Published 11-05-2026Last modified 06-10-2026
Open JSON

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-42876 is a medium (CVSS 4.9) Improper Authorization vulnerability in external-secrets. EPSS estimates a 0.26% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 16.4% of scored vulnerabilities.

Overall risk
20/100
0100
Low · default modelHow is this calculated?
CVSS score
4.9/10
010
Medium · v3.1 (CVE.org)
EPSS score
0.26%
0%100%
Low · +0.04 pp in 30 days
KEVNot listedIn no KEV catalog
RansomwareNone recordedNo known use recorded
Public exploits0No public exploits recorded

Advisory lineage

Upstream 0 · Downstream 1 · Related 2
OPENSUSE-SU-2026:21483-1CGA-Q78W-H46V-WJ4W

Timeline

  1. 11-05-2026
    PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
  2. 06-10-2026
    Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

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.

CVSS metrics

5 scores · 5 sources · 1 version

EPSS trend

Probability

0.26%

Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days

Percentile

16%

Versus all other CVEs

30-day change

+0.04 pp

From 0.21% on 21-09-2026

21-09-202621-10-2026
EPSS score
0.26%

Known exploited

Compare KEV catalogs

Not in any of the 3 tracked catalogs.

Public exploits

0 found

No public exploits indexed.

Weaknesses

CWE · root cause

Affected systems

Chainguard8 products
  • external-secrets-operator-1.0All versions (No fix recorded)
  • external-secrets-operator-1.1All versions (No fix recorded)
  • external-secrets-operator-1.2All versions (No fix recorded)
  • external-secrets-operator-1.3All versions (No fix recorded)
  • external-secrets-operator-2.0All versions (No fix recorded)
Wolfi5 products
  • external-secrets-operator-1.1All versions (No fix recorded)
  • external-secrets-operator-2.0All versions (No fix recorded)
  • external-secrets-operator-2.1All versions (No fix recorded)
  • external-secrets-operator-2.2< 2.2.0-r13
  • external-secrets-operator-2.3< 2.3.0-r11
External-secrets1 product
Github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets1 product
  • apis≥ 0.1.0, < 2.4.1 | All versions (No fix recorded)

4 vendors · 15 products

References

6 links