CVE-2026-40981 is an authorization bypass in Spring Cloud Config Server deployments using Google Secrets Manager as a configuration backend. The vulnerable GoogleSecretManagerV1AccessStrategy accepts a client-controlled GCP project identifier supplied in the X-Project-ID request header and uses it during project resolution without validating that the requesting client is authorized for that project. A remote unauthenticated client can consequently request secrets from GCP projects other than the intended project, subject to the IAM permissions held by the Config Server service account. Affected versions are Spring Cloud Config 3.1.0–3.1.13, 4.1.0–4.1.9, 4.2.0–4.2.6, 4.3.0–4.3.2, and 5.0.0–5.0.2.
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A Spring Cloud Config high-severity cross-project access vulnerability affecting GCP secrets, mentioned in a list of recent Spring ecosystem advisories.
A high-severity Spring Cloud Config Server vulnerability that can expose sensitive secrets from unintended Google Cloud Platform projects when Google Secrets Manager is used as the backend.
A vulnerability in Spring Cloud Config where clients can access secrets from any project that the Config Server can access on Google Secrets Manager.
An authorization bypass vulnerability in Spring Cloud Config Server when using Google Secrets Manager, where a client-controlled X-Project-ID header can cause the server to return secrets from unintended GCP projects accessible to the server's service account.
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Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.
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Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.
Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.