CVE-2025-54996: openbao Improper Privilege Management

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-54996 is a high (CVSS 7.2) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in openbao. EPSS estimates a 0.33% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 24.8% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 09-08-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 11-08-2025
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

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.

• CWE-269Improper Privilege ManagementThe product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor.