In short
- CVE-2025-54996 is a HIGH (CVSS 7.2) vulnerability affecting github.com/openbao/openbao, openbao (openbao).
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days (EPSS): 0.35%, higher than 28.9% of all vulnerabilities.
- Fix: update to 2.3.2, 0.0.0-20250806193240-9b0b5d4f345f or later.
| Package | Affected versions | Patched versions |
|---|
| github.com/openbao/openbao Go | ≥ 0.1.0, < 2.3.2≥ 0.1.0< 0.0.0-20250806193240-9b0b5d4f345f
| 2.3.20.0.0-20250806193240-9b0b5d4f345f
|
| openbao | < 2.3.2
| 2.3.2
|
Description
Impact
Accounts with access to the highly-privileged identity entity system in the root namespace may increase their scope directly to the root policy. While the identity system always allowed adding arbitrary policies, which in turn could contain capability grants on arbitrary paths, the root policy is restricted to manual generation using unseal or recovery key shares. The global root policy is not accessible from child namespaces.
Patches
OpenBao v2.3.2 will patch this issue.
Workarounds
Use of denied_parameters in any policy which has access to the affected identity endpoints (on identity entities) may be sufficient to prohibit this type of attack.
References
This issue was disclosed to HashiCorp and is the OpenBao equivalent of the following tickets:
NVD description
OpenBao exists to provide a software solution to manage, store, and distribute sensitive data including secrets, certificates, and keys. In versions 2.3.1 and below, accounts with access to highly-privileged identity entity systems in root namespaces were able to increase their scope directly to the root policy. While the identity system allowed adding arbitrary policies, which in turn could contain capability grants on arbitrary paths, the root policy was restricted to manual generation using unseal or recovery key shares. The global root policy was not accessible from child namespaces. This issue is fixed in version 2.3.2. To workaround this vulnerability, use of denied_parameters in any policy which has access to the affected identity endpoints (on identity entities) may be sufficient to prohibit this type of attack.
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