Privilege escalation in Hashicorp Vault

CVE-2025-5999

A privileged Vault operator with write permissions to the root namespace’s identity endpoint could escalate their own or another user’s token privileges to Vault’s root policy. Fixed in Vault Community Edition 1.20.0 and Vault Enterprise 1.20.0, 1.19.6, 1.18.11 and 1.16.22.

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: 0.005 (41.1th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 41st percentile — 41.1% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2025-5999: held from 0.005 to 0.005.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.005 · newest: 0.005 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-5999?
CVE-2025-5999 is a high-severity vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault, classified under Incorrect Privilege Assignment. CVSS score: 7.2/10. Published 2025-08-01.
How severe is CVE-2025-5999?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.2 out of 10.
Is CVE-2025-5999 known to be exploited?
2 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.