Vulnerability Intelligence Report
External Secrets Operator: label enforcement bypass in webhook generator enables secret exfiltration
CVE-2026-26287
External Secrets Operator reads information from a third-party service and automatically injects the values as Kubernetes Secrets. Starting in version 0.10.0 and prior to version 1.3.2, a bug in the `webhook` generator initialization order incorrectly cleared the label-enforcement flag (`EnforceLabels`) after it was set, resulting in the provider-side check for `external-secrets.io/type=webhook` being skipped (and the operation to succeed while it should have failed with `secret does not contain needed label 'external-secrets.io/type: webhook'. Update secret label to use it with webhook`. Version 1.3.2 contains a patch.
No Active Exploit Signals
CVSS Base Score
7.1
HIGH
Exploitability:2.9
Impact Score:4.3
Executive Threat Verdict
Evaluating...
Evaluating Threat Landscape...
Assessing known weaponization, exploitation telemetry, and federal advisories.
Attack Surface
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Authentication
—
Weaponization
—
SSVC Action
—
Weaknesses (CWE)
CWE-696 ↗CWE-696: Incorrect Behavior Order
Affected Products & Versions
| Vendor | Product | Affected Versions |
|---|---|---|
| external-secrets | external-secrets | >= 0.10.0, < 1.3.2 (affected) |
References & Technical Advisories
No reference links found.
Threat Intelligence Signals
GitHub Advisory
Identity & Timeline
| Status | PUBLISHED |
| Assigning Authority | GitHub, Inc. · Vendor · USA |
| Reserved | 2026-02-12T17:10:53 |
| Published | 2026-10-06T15:31:56 |
| Last Updated | 2026-10-06T17:21:44 |
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