OpenBao up to 2.5.4 Namespace Canonicalization privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as very critical has been reported in OpenBao up to 2.5.4. The impacted element is an unknown function of the component Namespace Canonicalization. The manipulation leads to privileges management. This vulnerability is referenced as CVE-2026-55775. Remote exploitation of the attack is possible. No exploit is available. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as very critical, has been found in OpenBao up to 2.5.4. This issue affects an unknown code of the component Namespace Canonicalization. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. Prior to 2.5.5, OpenBao users granted capabilities on /sys/namespaces/root within a non-root namespace could exploit special handling of the literal root path in namespace canonicalization. The /sys/namespaces/* endpoint family can resolve its containing namespace through a path prefix or X-Vault-Namespace header. ACL checks occurred before root canonicalized to an empty path, causing /sys/namespaces/root to resolve to the system backend's containing namespace and allowing permitted lookups, deletion, locking, or custom metadata changes against that direct containing namespace. The root namespace and arbitrary unrelated namespaces are not affected, and available operations depend on the capabilities granted on the path and subpaths such as /api-lock. This issue is fixed in version 2.5.5.

The advisory is shared at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-55775 since 06/17/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. The exploitation requires an enhanced level of successful authentication. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available. The price for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 09/15/2026). MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1068 for this issue.

Upgrading to version 2.5.5 eliminates this vulnerability.

Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Name

• OpenBao

Version

• 2.5.0
• 2.5.1
• 2.5.2
• 2.5.3
• 2.5.4

Website

• Product: https://github.com/openbao/openbao/

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Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

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