GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22

Source

https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22

Import Source

https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/05/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22.json

JSON Data

https://api.test.osv.dev/v1/vulns/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22

Aliases

Downstream

CGA (16)

MINI (2)

Published

2026-05-08T17:24:15Z

Modified

2026-07-17T21:07:45Z

Severity

4.9 (Medium) CVSS_V3 - CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N CVSS Calculator

Summary

ExternalSecrets vulnerable to privilege escalation with secret overwriting

Details

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

Database specific

{
    "cwe_ids": [
        "CWE-285"
    ],
    "github_reviewed": true,
    "github_reviewed_at": "2026-05-08T17:24:15Z",
    "nvd_published_at": "2026-05-11T20:25:44Z",
    "severity": "MODERATE"
}

References

Affected packages

Go / github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/apis

Package

Name: github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/apis; View open source insights on deps.dev
Purl: pkg:golang/github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/apis

Affected ranges

Type: SEMVER
Events: Introduced

0.1.0

Fixed

2.4.1

Database specific

source

"https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/05/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22/GHSA-fq7h-9x26-6j22.json"