VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2026-34984

External Secrets Operator reads information from a third-party service and automatically injects the values as Kubernetes Secrets.

HIGH 7.1EPSS 0.26%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.26%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

External Secrets Operator reads information from a third-party service and automatically injects the values as Kubernetes Secrets. Versions 2.2.0 and below contain a vulnerability in runtime/template/v2/template.go where the v2 template engine removes env and expandenv from Sprig's TxtFuncMap() but leaves the getHostByName function accessible to user-controlled templates. Since ESO executes templates within the controller process, an attacker who can create or update templated ExternalSecret resources can invoke controller-side DNS lookups using secret-derived values. This creates a DNS exfiltration primitive, allowing fetched secret material to be leaked via DNS queries without requiring direct outbound network access from the attacker's workload. The impact is a confidentiality issue, particularly in environments where untrusted or lower-trust users can author templated ExternalSecret resources and the controller has DNS resolution capability. This issue has been fixed in version 2.3.0.

CVSS 4.0: 7.1 HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
EPSS: 0.26% probability · 18th percentile
CISA KEV: Not listed
Weakness: CWE-200
Affected: external-secrets/external secrets operator
Source: security-advisories@github.com

References

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.