CVE-2024-45041
External Secrets Operator vulnerable to privilege escalation
Impact
### 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: 1. 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. 2. 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
Affected packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| go | github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets | < 0.10.2 | 0.10.2 |
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions |
|---|---|---|
| External-Secrets | External Secrets Operator | before 0.10.2 |
Weakness classification
References
- NVD record
- CVE.org record
- GitHub advisory
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/commit/428a452fd2ad45935312f2c2c0d40bc37ce6e67c
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/security/advisories/GHSA-qwgc-rr35-h4x9
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-qwgc-rr35-h4x9
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-45041
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/commit/0368b9806f660fa6bc52cbbf3c6ccdb27c58bb35
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/deploy/charts/external-secrets/templates/cert-controller-rbac.yaml#L27
- https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/blob/main/deploy/charts/external-secrets/templates/cert-controller-rbac.yaml#L49
- https://pkg.go.dev/vuln/GO-2024-3126