Privilege escalation in Openbao
CVE-2025-54996
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.
Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation
Published · last modified .
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 7.2 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.
EPSS exploit prediction
EPSS: 0.003 (22.4th percentile), scored .
Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 22nd percentile — 22.4% 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
- Openbao — versions < 2.3.2
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- github.com/openbao/openbao/security/advisories/GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqc (Vendor Advisory)
- github.com/openbao/openbao/pull/1627 (Issue Tracking)
- github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.3.2 (Release Notes)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2025-54996?
- CVE-2025-54996 is a high-severity vulnerability in Openbao, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 7.2/10. Published 2025-08-09.
- How severe is CVE-2025-54996?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.2 out of 10.