Know every vulnerabilitybefore it knows you.
DevGuard continuously monitors your dependencies and alerts you when CVEs like this one affect your stack — with real-time threat intelligence built for developers.
GHSA-qwgc-rr35-h4x9
No affected components available
Details
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(https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/deploy/charts/external-secrets/templates/cert-controller-rbac.yaml#L49). It also has path/update verb of validatingwebhookconfigurations resources(https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/deploy/charts/external-secrets/templates/cert-controller-rbac.yaml#L27). As a result, if a malicious user can access the worker node which has this deployment. he/she can:
-
For the "get/list secrets" permission, he/she can abuse the SA token of this deployment to retrieve or get ALL secrets in the whole cluster, including the cluster-admin secret if created. After that, he/she can abuse the cluster-admin secret to do whatever he/she likes to the whole cluster, resulting in a cluster-level privilege escalation.
-
For the patch/update verb of validatingwebhookconfigurations, the malicious user can abuse these permissions to get sensitive data or lanuch DoS attacks:
For the privilege escalation attack, by updating/patching a Webhook to make it listen to Secret update operations, the attacker can capture and log all data from requests attempting to update Secrets. More specifically, when a Secret is updated, this Webhook sends the request data to the logging-service, which can then log the content of the Secret. This way, an attacker could indirectly gain access to the full contents of the Secret.
For the DoS attack, by updating/patching a Webhook, and making it deny all Pod create and update requests, the attacker can prevent any new Pods from being created or existing Pods from being updated, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.
PoC
Please see the "Details" section
Impact
Privilege escalation
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a low impact on the integrity of the data. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.
Exploitation activity has been observed. Apply available patches or mitigations urgently.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
Browse More
Continuously monitor your dependencies and get alerted when vulnerabilities like this one affect your stack.
Checkout DevGuard