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Fencer Intel
high 8.3

CVE-2024-45041 json

External Secrets Operator vulnerable to privilege escalation

published 2y ago modified 4mo ago also GHSA-qwgc-rr35-h4x9 , GO-2024-3126 , EUVD-2024-2861

cvss
8.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.6%
EPSS 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 48%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

External Secrets Operator is a Kubernetes operator that integrates external secret management systems. The external-secrets has a deployment called default-external-secrets-cert-controller, which is bound with a same-name ClusterRole. This ClusterRole has "get/list" verbs of secrets resources. It also has path/update verb of validatingwebhookconfigurations resources. This can be used to abuse the SA token of the deployment to retrieve or get ALL secrets in the whole cluster, capture and log all data from requests attempting to update Secrets, or make a webhook deny all Pod create and update requests. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.10.2.

Patch / fix

  • go github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets 0.10.2
  • external-secrets external-secrets 0.10.2

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2y ago

Exploit prediction

0.59% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 48% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
GitHub 3.1 8.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets
<0.10.2
0.10.2

Affected products

  • external-secrets external-secrets

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management
  • CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.