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OpenAdvisories
High · 7.2 CVE-2025-54996 BIT-openbao-2025-54996EUVD-2025-24038GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqcGO-2025-3857

OpenBao Root Namespace Operator May Elevate Token Privileges

Published Aug 9, 2025 · Updated Aug 11, 2025 · Assigned by GitHub_M

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
openbao openbao < 2.3.2 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
SLES 15 SP6 govulncheck-vulndb 0.0.20250814T182633-150000.1.98.1 SUSE-SU-2025:02912-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Tumbleweed govulncheck-vulndb 0.0.20250811T192933-1.1 openSUSE-SU-2025:15434-1
openSUSE Tumbleweed openbao 2.3.2-1.1 openSUSE-SU-2025:15460-1
openSUSE Leap 15.6 govulncheck-vulndb 0.0.20250814T182633-150000.1.98.1 SUSE-SU-2025:02912-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.24 openbao 2.3.2-r0 —
Alpine v3.23 openbao 2.3.2-r0 —
Alpine v3.22 openbao 2.3.2-r0 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Go github.com/openbao/openbao >= 0.1.0, < 2.3.2 2.3.2 GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqc
Go github.com/openbao/openbao < 0.0.0-20250806193240-9b0b5d4f345f 0.0.0-20250806193240-9b0b5d4f345f GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqc
Go github.com/openbao/openbao < 0.0.0-20250806193240-9b0b5d4f345f · >= 0.1.0 0.0.0-20250806193240-9b0b5d4f345f GO-2025-3857

Advisories 4

References