external-secrets up to 0.19.x as access control

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in external-secrets up to 0.19.x. It has been classified as critical. Affected by this issue is some unknown functionality. This manipulation of the argument as causes access control. This vulnerability is registered as CVE-2025-62159. Remote exploitation of the attack is possible. No exploit is available. Upgrading the affected component is recommended.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability has been found in external-secrets up to 0.19.x and classified as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown code block. The manipulation of the argument as with an unknown input leads to a access control vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-284. The product does not restrict or incorrectly restricts access to a resource from an unauthorized actor. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality. The summary by CVE is:

External Secrets Operator reads information from a third-party service and automatically injects the values as Kubernetes Secrets. A vulnerability was discovered in the BeyondTrust provider implementation for External Secrets Operator versions 0.10.1 through 0.19.2. The provider previously retrieved Kubernetes secrets directly, without validating the namespace context or the type of secret store. This allowed unauthorized cross-namespace secret access, violating security boundaries and potentially exposing sensitive credentials. In version 0.20.0, the provider code was updated to use the `resolvers.SecretKeyRef` utility, which enforces namespace validation and only allows cross-namespace access for `ClusterSecretStore` types. This ensures secrets are only retrieved from the correct namespace, mitigating the risk of unauthorized access. All users should upgrade to the latest version containing this fix. As a workaround, use a policy engine such as Kyverno or OPA to prevent using BeyondTrust provider and/or validate the `(Cluster)SecretStore` and ensure the namespace may only be set when using a `ClusterSecretStore`.

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2025-62159 since 10/07/2025. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit. The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1068 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

Upgrading to version 0.20.0 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Name

• external-secrets

Version

• 0.1
• 0.2
• 0.3
• 0.4
• 0.5
• 0.6
• 0.7
• 0.8
• 0.9
• 0.10
• 0.11
• 0.12
• 0.13
• 0.14
• 0.15
• 0.16
• 0.17
• 0.18
• 0.19

Website

• Product: https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/

CPE 2.3info

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