OpenBao's Templated Policies Allow Privilege Escalation via Wildcard Characters

CISA KEV is observed exploitation evidence. FIRST EPSS is a dated prediction of exploitation in the next 30 days. Missing scores are unknown. This collector requests predictions only for explicit CVE aliases in the public NuGet archive; Microsoft release views retain their existing prediction scope.

No collected risk observation for these identifiers. This does not establish absence of exploitation or a zero probability.

OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. Prior to 2.6.0, templated ACL, PKI, and SSH policies could substitute attacker-controlled identity data without rejecting syntax-significant characters. In ACL templated policies, asterisks, plus signs, and slashes could alter path matching. In PKI allowed_uri_sans_template and allowed_domains policies, an asterisk could broaden certificate issuance to unauthorized domains. In SSH allowed_users and allowed_domains policies, a comma could add unauthorized principals. Exploitation requires a deployment to use templated policy data that users can freely modify; templates based on the randomly generated identity.entity.id value are not affected. This could allow privilege escalation, unauthorized access, and unauthorized certificate issuance. This issue is fixed in version 2.6.0.

Source published

21 Sep 2026 15:03:59 UTC

Source modified

25 Sep 2026 19:26:50 UTC

Observed here

23 Oct 2026 15:48:27 UTC

Source terms

CVE Program Terms of Use

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This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: cve-program · CVE Program Terms of Use. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS 4.0 · 7.5 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. Prior to 2.6.0, templated ACL, PKI, and SSH policies could substitute attacker-controlled identity data without rejecting syntax-significant characters. In ACL templated policies, asterisks, plus signs, and slashes could alter path matching. In PKI allowed_uri_sans_template and allowed_domains policies, an asterisk could broaden certificate issuance to unauthorized domains. In SSH allowed_users and allowed_domains policies, a comma could add unauthorized principals. Exploitation requires a deployment to use templated policy data that users can freely modify; templates based on the randomly generated identity.entity.id value are not affected. This could allow privilege escalation, unauthorized access, and unauthorized certificate issuance. This issue is fixed in version 2.6.0.

Source published

Sep 21, 2026, 3:03:59 PM (timezone not stated)

Source modified

Sep 25, 2026, 7:26:50 PM (timezone not stated)

Observed here

11 Nov 2026 16:02:40 UTC

Source terms

ENISA EUVD · source terms and attribution apply

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This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: euvd · ENISA EUVD · source terms and attribution apply. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

EUVD CVSS 4.0 · 7.5 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. Prior to 2.6.0, templated ACL, PKI, and SSH policies could substitute attacker-controlled identity data without rejecting syntax-significant characters. In ACL templated policies, asterisks, plus signs, and slashes could alter path matching. In PKI allowed_uri_sans_template and allowed_domains policies, an asterisk could broaden certificate issuance to unauthorized domains. In SSH allowed_users and allowed_domains policies, a comma could add unauthorized principals. Exploitation requires a deployment to use templated policy data that users can freely modify; templates based on the randomly generated identity.entity.id value are not affected. This could allow privilege escalation, unauthorized access, and unauthorized certificate issuance. This issue is fixed in version 2.6.0.

Source published

21 Sep 2026 15:17:31 UTC

Source modified

25 Sep 2026 20:17:46 UTC

Observed here

25 Oct 2026 15:18:57 UTC

Source terms

NIST NVD usage terms; underlying source attribution retained

Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON

This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: nvd · NIST NVD usage terms; underlying source attribution retained. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS 4.0 · [email protected] · Secondary · 7.5 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

## Impact ### ACL Policies OpenBao supports "templated polices": Policies with placeholders that are replaced at evaluation time. This allows you to write a single policy which e.g. grants user "alice" access to all entries in a key value engine prefixed with `alice/` while granting "bob" access to `bob/`, "carol" access to `carol/`, etc. If the data used in the template can be controlled by an attacker (e.g. your system allows the user to freely select their username) and "globbing" characters are considered valid ( e.g. `*` is a valid username) they will be able to escalate their privileges. The problematic characters are `*`, `+` and `/`. ### PKI Secrets Engine `allowed_uri_sans_template` and `allowed_domains` Polices The PKI secrets engine allows you to limit the "common names" a user can requests a TLS certificate for. Similar to the ACL polices this allows you to restrict e.g. "alice" to `alice.example.com`, "bob" to `bob.example.com`, etc. via templates. Again, if an attacker can control this data freely, they can trick the PKI engine into using e.g. the `*.example.com` glob effectively allowing them to issue certificates for any subdomain of `example.com` The problematic character in this case is `*`. ### SSH Secrets Engine `allowed_users` and `allowed_domains` Polices The SSH secrets engine allows you to limit the "principal" a user can request as SSH certificate for. Similar to ACL and PKI, this allows templates. The problematic character in this case is `,` as the template result is split at all commas and each entry will be allowed. ## Am I affected? You are affected, if a) you use a templated policy (ACL, PKI or SSH) and b) your users can modify data used by your template freely. If you can guarantee that the data used in your templates will never contain the problematic characters, you are not affected. For example, if you use `{{ identity.entity.id }}` in your policy, you are not affected, because `identity.entity.id` is randomly generated by OpenBao. Even with this vulnerability patched: Using user controllable data in your policies is probably not the best idea. ## Patches All three have been patched in OpenBao v2.6.0.

Source published

22 Sep 2026 20:36:49 UTC

Source modified

1 Oct 2026 20:55:48 UTC

Observed here

24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC

Source terms

GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0

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This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: osv · GitHub Advisory Database · CC-BY-4.0. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS_V4 · CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Publisher rating · HIGH

OpenBao's Templated Policies Allow Privilege Escalation via Wildcard Characters in github.com/openbao/openbao

Source published

1 Oct 2026 20:23:38 UTC

Source modified

1 Oct 2026 20:55:48 UTC

Observed here

24 Oct 2026 13:19:41 UTC

Source terms

OSV · upstream source license applies

Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON

This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: osv · OSV · upstream source license applies. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.