Know every vulnerabilitybefore it knows you.
DevGuard continuously monitors your dependencies and alerts you when CVEs like this one affect your stack — with real-time threat intelligence built for developers.
GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqc
No affected components available
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:
- https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2025-13-vault-root-namespace-operator-may-elevate-token-privileges/76032
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2025-5999
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker needs high-level or administrative privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a high impact on the integrity of the data. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
Browse More
Continuously monitor your dependencies and get alerted when vulnerabilities like this one affect your stack.
Checkout DevGuard