OpenBao Root Namespace Operator May Elevate Token Privileges

### Impact Accounts with access to the highly-privileged identity entity system in the root namespace may increase their scope directly to the `root` policy. While the identity system always allowed adding arbitrary policies, which in turn could contain capability grants on arbitrary paths, the `root` policy is restricted to manual generation using unseal or recovery key shares. The global `root` policy is not accessible from child namespaces. ### Patches OpenBao v2.3.2 will patch this issue. ### Workarounds Use of `denied_parameters` in any policy which has access to the affected identity endpoints (on [identity entities](https://openbao.org/api-docs/secret/identity/entity/)) may be sufficient to prohibit this type of attack. ### References This issue was disclosed to HashiCorp and is the OpenBao equivalent of the following tickets: - https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2025-13-vault-root-namespace-operator-may-elevate-token-privileges/76032 - https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2025-5999

CVSS 3.1

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Severity from

GitHub (reviewed advisory)

Weakness

CWE-266, CWE-269

Also known as

BIT-openbao-2025-54996, CVE-2025-54996, GO-2025-3857

• github.com/openbao/openbao/security/advisories/GHSA-vf84-mxrq-crqc
• nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-54996
• github.com/openbao/openbao/pull/1627
• github.com/openbao/openbao/commit/9b0b5d4f345fdfb1065956f042b12cbd86cd6e0f
• discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2025-13-vault-root-namespace-operator-may-elevate-token-privileges/76032
• github.com/openbao/openbao
• github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.3.2
• nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2025-5999