CVE-2026-22728 sealed-secrets /v1/rotate can widen sealing scope to cluster-wide via attacker-controlled template annotations
Attackers can bypass namespace restrictions to decrypt secrets cluster-wide by injecting annotations during rotation, exposing sensitive credentials.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-22728?
CVE-2026-22728 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Bitnami sealed-secrets, published on 26 Feb 2026. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Bitnami Sealed Secrets is vulnerable to a scope-widening attack during the secret rotation (/v1/rotate) flow. The rotation handler derives the sealing scope for the newly encrypted output from untrusted spec.template.metadata.annotations present in the input SealedSecret. By submitting a victim SealedSecret to the rotate endpoint with the annotation sealedsecrets.bitnami.com/cluster-wide=true injected into the template metadata, a remote attacker can obtain a rotated version of the secret that is cluster-wide. This bypasses original "strict" or "namespace-wide" constraints, allowing the attacker to retarget and unseal the secret in any namespace or under any name to recover the plaintext credentials.
Weakness: CWE-284
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-22728?
4 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets and sealed-secrets.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets Go | All versions | 0.36.0 |
github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets Go | All versions | 0.36.0 |
github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets Go | All versions | 0.36.0 |
sealed-secrets Bitnami | All versions | 0.36.0 |
How do I fix CVE-2026-22728?
Upgrade github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets to 0.36.0 or later.
Is CVE-2026-22728 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-22728 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BIT-sealed-secrets-2026-22728, GHSA-465p-v42x-3fmj, GO-2026-4565.