CVE-2024-45041

External Secrets Operator vulnerable to privilege escalation

HIGH
8.8
CVSS Score
Published: September 9, 2024 at 02:54 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 07:53 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorExternal Secrets Operator

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Severity
HIGH8.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.6%
SSVC
PoC

Description

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.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 0.10.2
Affected range stops below 0.10.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCPoCNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusANALYZED
CWE
CWE-269CWE-732

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