FKIE_CVE-2026-59341
Vulnerability from fkie_nvd - Published: 2026-09-15 10:17 - Updated: 2026-09-18 19:21
Severity
Summary
A security vulnerability exists in the Sealed Secrets controller's unauthenticated POST endpoints. By submitting a modified payload containing custom Go template logic in spec.template.data, an attacker with internal network access can abuse the handler as a decryption oracle to recover the full plaintext of any sealed secret.
The POST /v1/verify and /v1/rotate handlers call Unseal() to decrypt target secrets, then render any Go templates found in spec.template.data.* using the decrypted payload as the evaluation context (pkg/apis/sealedsecrets/v1alpha1/sealedsecret_expansion.go). Errors encountered during template execution are directly reflected in the resulting HTTP response status codes.
Missing AEAD label binding: the spec.template.data field is omitted from the AEAD authenticated-data label binding ciphertext to metadata. As a result, an attacker can copy a target's valid metadata and encryptedData verbatim, satisfying AEAD decryption and label validation, while freely replacing spec.template.data with arbitrary template logic.
Side-channel oracle: template execution errors map directly to HTTP response codes. HTTP 200 (OK) indicates template execution succeeded; HTTP 409 (Conflict) indicates template execution failed (e.g. via {{ fail "..." }}).
By injecting conditional statements such as {{ if eq (substr 0 1 .password) "S" }}ok{{ else }}{{ fail "x" }}{{ end }}, an attacker receives an HTTP 200 status when a character guess is correct and an HTTP 409 when it is incorrect. This differential response leaks one character-equality bit per request, allowing full secret extraction over successive queries.
Attack vector & prerequisites: unauthenticated; requires network access to the controller's internal service port (:8080). Although this service is not exposed to the public internet by default, it is accessible to any pod within the Kubernetes cluster or via a kubectl port-forward connection.
References
Impacted products
| Vendor | Product | Version |
|---|
{
"affected": [
{
"affectedData": [
{
"product": "sealed-secrets",
"repo": "https://github.com/bitnami/sealed-secrets",
"vendor": "Bitnami",
"versions": [
{
"lessThanOrEqual": "0.38.4",
"status": "affected",
"version": "0",
"versionType": "semver"
},
{
"status": "unaffected",
"version": "0.40.0",
"versionType": "semver"
}
]
}
],
"source": "security@vmware.com"
}
],
"cveTags": [],
"descriptions": [
{
"lang": "en",
"value": "A security vulnerability exists in the Sealed Secrets controller\u0027s unauthenticated POST endpoints. By submitting a modified payload containing custom Go template logic in spec.template.data, an attacker with internal network access can abuse the handler as a decryption oracle to recover the full plaintext of any sealed secret.\n\n\n\nThe POST /v1/verify and /v1/rotate handlers call Unseal() to decrypt target secrets, then render any Go templates found in spec.template.data.* using the decrypted payload as the evaluation context (pkg/apis/sealedsecrets/v1alpha1/sealedsecret_expansion.go). Errors encountered during template execution are directly reflected in the resulting HTTP response status codes.\n\n\n\nMissing AEAD label binding: the spec.template.data field is omitted from the AEAD authenticated-data label binding ciphertext to metadata. As a result, an attacker can copy a target\u0027s valid metadata and encryptedData verbatim, satisfying AEAD decryption and label validation, while freely replacing spec.template.data with arbitrary template logic.\n\n\n\nSide-channel oracle: template execution errors map directly to HTTP response codes. HTTP 200 (OK) indicates template execution succeeded; HTTP 409 (Conflict) indicates template execution failed (e.g. via {{ fail \"...\" }}).\n\n\n\nBy injecting conditional statements such as {{ if eq (substr 0 1 .password) \"S\" }}ok{{ else }}{{ fail \"x\" }}{{ end }}, an attacker receives an HTTP 200 status when a character guess is correct and an HTTP 409 when it is incorrect. This differential response leaks one character-equality bit per request, allowing full secret extraction over successive queries.\n\n\n\nAttack vector \u0026 prerequisites: unauthenticated; requires network access to the controller\u0027s internal service port (:8080). Although this service is not exposed to the public internet by default, it is accessible to any pod within the Kubernetes cluster or via a kubectl port-forward connection."
}
],
"id": "CVE-2026-59341",
"lastModified": "2026-09-18T19:21:34.307",
"metrics": {
"cvssMetricV31": [
{
"cvssData": {
"attackComplexity": "HIGH",
"attackVector": "NETWORK",
"availabilityImpact": "NONE",
"baseScore": 4.2,
"baseSeverity": "MEDIUM",
"confidentialityImpact": "HIGH",
"integrityImpact": "NONE",
"privilegesRequired": "HIGH",
"scope": "UNCHANGED",
"userInteraction": "REQUIRED",
"vectorString": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N",
"version": "3.1"
},
"exploitabilityScore": 0.5,
"impactScore": 3.6,
"source": "security@vmware.com",
"type": "Secondary"
}
],
"ssvcV203": [
{
"source": "134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0",
"ssvcData": {
"id": "CVE-2026-59341",
"options": [
{
"exploitation": "poc"
},
{
"automatable": "no"
},
{
"technicalImpact": "partial"
}
],
"role": "CISA Coordinator",
"timestamp": "2026-09-15T17:27:25.731287Z",
"version": "2.0.3"
}
}
]
},
"published": "2026-09-15T10:17:05.673",
"references": [
{
"source": "security@vmware.com",
"url": "https://github.com/bitnami/sealed-secrets"
},
{
"source": "security@vmware.com",
"url": "https://github.com/bitnami/sealed-secrets/security/advisories/GHSA-qj4p-m373-p2wg"
},
{
"source": "134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0",
"url": "https://github.com/bitnami/sealed-secrets/security/advisories/GHSA-qj4p-m373-p2wg"
}
],
"sourceIdentifier": "security@vmware.com",
"vulnStatus": "Awaiting Analysis",
"weaknesses": [
{
"description": [
{
"lang": "en",
"value": "CWE-203"
}
],
"source": "134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0",
"type": "Secondary"
}
]
}
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Experimental. This forecast is provided for visualization only and may change without notice. Do not use it for operational decisions.
Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the
vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base
model, served locally by ML-Gateway.
They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
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Related by attack behaviour
Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.
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