OpenBao Privileged Operator Identity Group Root Escalation

Open Source Vulnerabilities CVE-2025-64761

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 group identity group, escalating their or another user's permissions in the system. Specifically this is an issue when: an operator in the root namespace has access to identity/groups endpoints and 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. This issue has been patched in version 2.4.4.

Open Source Vulnerabilities GHSA-7ff4-jw48-3436

### 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.

Open Source Vulnerabilities GO-2025-4156

OpenBao is Vulnerable to Privileged Operator Identity Group Root Escalation in github.com/openbao/openbao. NOTE: The source advisory for this report contains additional versions that could not be automatically mapped to standard Go module versions. (If this is causing false-positive reports from vulnerability scanners, please suggest an edit to the report.) The additional affected modules and versions are: github.com/openbao/openbao before v2.4.4.

Open Source Vulnerabilities BIT-openbao-2025-64761

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 group identity group, escalating their or another user's permissions in the system. Specifically this is an issue when: an operator in the root namespace has access to identity/groups endpoints and 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. This issue has been patched in version 2.4.4.