What is CVE-2021-38553?

CVE-2021-38553 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault, classified under Improper Preservation of Permissions. CVSS score: 4.4/10. Published 2021-08-13.

How severe is CVE-2021-38553?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.4 out of 10.

Vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault

CVE-2021-38553

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise 1.4.0 through 1.7.3 initialized an underlying database file associated with the Integrated Storage feature with excessively broad filesystem permissions. Fixed in Vault and Vault Enterprise 1.8.0.

Published 2021-08-13 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 4.4 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (17.5th percentile), scored 2026-10-02.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 17th percentile — 17.5% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.003 · newest: 0.003 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Hashicorp Vault

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-281 — Improper Preservation of Permissions

References

discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2021-20-vault-s-integrated-storage-backend-databa… (Vendor Advisory)
security.gentoo.org/glsa/202207-01 (vendor-advisory, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2021-38553?: CVE-2021-38553 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault, classified under Improper Preservation of Permissions. CVSS score: 4.4/10. Published 2021-08-13.
How severe is CVE-2021-38553?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.4 out of 10.