OpenBao is Vulnerable to Privileged Operator Identity Group Root Escalation
### Impact Similar to HCSEC-2025-13 / CVE-2025-5999, a privileged operator could use the identity group subsystem to add a root policy to a group identity group, escalating their or another user's permissions in the system. Specifically this is an issue when: 1. An operator in the root namespace has access to `identity/groups` endpoints. 2. An operator does not have policy access. Otherwise, an operator with policy access could create or modify an existing policy to grant root-equivalent permissions through the `sudo` capability. ### Patches Patched in version 2.4.4. ### Workarounds Users should audit the use of identity subsystem and deny operators access if it is not in use.
describes (1)
Related CVEs.
| ID | severity | exploitable | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2025-64761US | high7.2 | — | ||
OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. Prior to version 2.4.4, a privileged operator could use the identity group subsystem to add a root policy to a g… | ||||
references
External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.
- https://github.com/openbao/openbaoPACKAGE
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/commit/16bb0ccd37a502930a289d434cbe4e7b4edd66e5WEB
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/commit/747a1378c2756f86296ad9450f74f6faeecc2eb7WEB
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/pull/2143WEB
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.4.4WEB
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/security/advisories/GHSA-7ff4-jw48-3436WEB
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-64761ADVISORY
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