CVE-2025-54996
OpenBao Root Namespace Operator May Elevate Token Privileges
Impact
### 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](https://openbao.org/api-docs/secret/identity/entity/)) 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
Affected packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| go | github.com/openbao/openbao | >= 0.1.0, < 2.3.2 | 2.3.2 |
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions |
|---|---|---|
| Openbao | Openbao | before 2.3.2 |
Weakness classification
References
- NVD record
- CVE.org record
- GitHub advisory
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/pull/1627
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.3.2
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/security/advisories/GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqc
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqc
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/commit/9b0b5d4f345fdfb1065956f042b12cbd86cd6e0f
- 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
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-54996