Auth bypass in External-Secrets

CVE-2026-42876

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.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 4.9 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (15.6th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 16th percentile — 15.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-42876: held from 0.002 to 0.003.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.003 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-42876?
CVE-2026-42876 is a medium-severity vulnerability in External-Secrets, classified under Improper Authorization. CVSS score: 4.9/10. Published 2026-05-11.
How severe is CVE-2026-42876?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.9 out of 10.