Security Bulletin
Summary
Vault Secrets Operator 1.3.0 up to 1.4.1 is vulnerable to an arbitrary file read and credential exfiltration issue in the AppRole authentication configuration that may allow a tenant with limited Kubernetes RBAC permissions to read files from the operator pod's filesystem and transmit their contents to a tenant-controlled endpoint, potentially leading to privilege escalation within the cluster. This vulnerability (CVE-2026-8715) is fixed in Vault Secrets Operator 1.5.0.
Vulnerability Details
CVEID: CVE-2026-8715
DESCRIPTION: Vault Secrets Operator 1.3.0 introduced a spec.appRole.secretIDPath field on the VaultAuth and VaultAuthGlobal custom resources, intended to allow an operator administrator to reference a Secret ID file mounted into the operator pod. The path validation for this field only checked for path traversal sequences and confirmed the target was a regular file below a size limit; it did not restrict which files on the operator pod's filesystem could be referenced. Because VaultConnection.spec.address is also supplied through a tenant-controlled custom resource, a tenant with create and get permissions on VaultAuth, VaultConnection, and VaultStaticSecret resources in their namespace could set secretIDPath to any accessible file on the operator pod and direct the operator to transmit the file's contents to a tenant-controlled endpoint as part of an AppRole authentication request. This issue requires an authenticated Kubernetes user holding those namespaced resource permissions, which correspond to the editor ClusterRoles published by the Vault Secrets Operator Helm chart for end users. Deployments that do not grant tenants the ability to create or modify VaultAuth or VaultConnection resources are not affected. Deployments using AppRole authentication but configured without the secretIDPath field prior to 1.3.0 are not affected.
CWE: CWE-552: Files or Directories Accessible to External Parties
CVSS Source: HashiCorp Inc.
CVSS Base score: 9.6
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N)
Affected Products and Versions
| Affected Product(s) | Version(s) |
| Tooling Community Edition | affected from 1.3.0 up to 1.5.0 |
| Tooling Enterprise | N/A |
Remediation/Fixes
Customers should evaluate the risk associated with this issue and consider upgrading to Vault Secrets Operator 1.5.0. Note that version 1.5.0 removes the spec.appRole.secretIDPath field; existing VaultAuth configurations using this field must be migrated to use spec.appRole.secretRef, which references a Kubernetes Secret containing the AppRole Secret ID.
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References
Acknowledgement
This issue was reported to HashiCorp by Trung Nguyen (@everping) of CyStack and Artem Cherezov (https://github.com/cherez0ff).
Change History
13 Aug 2026: Initial Publication
*The CVSS Environment Score is customer environment specific and will ultimately impact the Overall CVSS Score. Customers can evaluate the impact of this vulnerability in their environments by accessing the links in the Reference section of this Security Bulletin.
Disclaimer
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Document Location
Worldwide
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Document Information
Modified date:
13 August 2026
Initial Publish date:
13 August 2026
UID
ibm17283728