What is CVE-2020-12757?

CVE-2020-12757 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2020-06-10.

How severe is CVE-2020-12757?

Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.

Privilege escalation in Hashicorp Vault

CVE-2020-12757

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise 1.4.0 and 1.4.1, when configured with the GCP Secrets Engine, may incorrectly generate GCP Credentials with the default time-to-live lease duration instead of the engine-configured setting. This may lead to generated GCP credentials being valid for longer than intended. Fixed in 1.4.2.

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

Published 2020-06-10 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.015 (73.6th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 74th percentile — 73.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.015 · newest: 0.015 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Hashicorp Vault

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-269 — Improper Privilege Management

References

www.hashicorp.com/blog/category/vault/ (Vendor Advisory)
github.com/hashicorp/vault/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md (Release Notes, Vendor Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-12757?: CVE-2020-12757 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2020-06-10.
How severe is CVE-2020-12757?: Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.