CVE-2026-22822

External Secrets Operator insecurely retrieves secrets through the getSecretKey templating function

State
Published
Severity
9.3 Critical
Published
Jan 21, 2026
Updated
Jul 15, 2026
Reserved
Jan 9, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

External Secrets Operator reads information from a third-party service and automatically injects the values as Kubernetes Secrets. Starting in version 0.20.2 and prior to version 1.2.0, the `getSecretKey` template function, while introduced for senhasegura Devops Secrets Management (DSM) provider, has the ability to fetch secrets cross-namespaces with the roleBinding of the external-secrets controller, bypassing our security mechanisms. This function was completely removed in version 1.2.0, as everything done with that templating function can be done in a different way while respecting External Secrets Operator's safeguards As a workaround, use a policy engine such as Kubernetes, Kyverno, Kubewarden, or OPA to prevent the usage of `getSecretKey` in any ExternalSecret resource.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
4.09.3 CriticalCVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:HGitHub_M
3.18.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:Hredhat-SADP

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
external-secretsexternal-secrets
  • >= 0.20.2, < 1.2.0Affected

References

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