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Vulnerability record · CVE-2025-54996 · published 9 August 2025

CVE-2025-54996: Openbao improper privilege management vulnerability

Openbao · Openbao

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.

7.2 CVSS 3.1 High EPSS 0.31% · top 78.8% CWE-269 · Improper privilege management
7.2CVSS 3.1 base score
0.31%EPSS exploitation probability, 30 days
NoNot in CISA KEV
1Affected product versions listed by NVD
3References
17 Jun 2026Last modified by 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.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

1 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.

References

LinkTags
https://github.com/openbao/openbao/pull/1627 Issue Tracking
https://github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.3.2 Release Notes
https://github.com/openbao/openbao/security/advisories/GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqc Vendor Advisory

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Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.

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Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2025-54996), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.