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.
History

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 01:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
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.
Title OpenBao Root Namespace Operator May Elevate Token Privileges
Weaknesses CWE-269
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 7.2, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published: 2025-08-09T01:32:09.953Z

Updated: 2025-08-09T01:32:09.953Z

Reserved: 2025-08-04T17:34:24.420Z

Link: CVE-2025-54996

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2025-08-09T02:15:37.887

Modified: 2025-08-09T02:15:37.887

Link: CVE-2025-54996

cve-icon Redhat

No data.