OpenBao's Templated Policies Allow Privilege Escalation via Wildcard Characters
## 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
GHSA-59w7-v8rr-pr4p
Primary source · Revision 1
Imported from structured advisory data. Source references identify upstream records or fields; verify affected versions and your deployed configuration.
Security context
Source reference: osv:GHSA-59w7-v8rr-pr4p
github.com/openbao/openbao
Source reference: /affected/0/package/name
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- 0.0.0-20260710001938-2d4ebafec5c5
Source reference:
/affected/0/ranges - Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
github.com/openbao/openbao
Source reference: /affected/1/package/name
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- Not stated in this record
- Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
Structured affected-version data
Original package identities and version rules from this source.
[
{
"ranges": [
{
"type": "SEMVER",
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
},
{
"fixed": "0.0.0-20260710001938-2d4ebafec5c5"
}
]
}
],
"package": {
"name": "github.com/openbao/openbao",
"purl": "pkg:golang/github.com/openbao/openbao",
"ecosystem": "Go"
},
"database_specific": {
"source": "https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/09/GHSA-59w7-v8rr-pr4p/GHSA-59w7-v8rr-pr4p.json"
}
},
{
"ranges": [
{
"type": "SEMVER",
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0.1.0"
},
{
"last_affected": "1.1.5"
}
]
}
],
"package": {
"name": "github.com/openbao/openbao",
"purl": "pkg:golang/github.com/openbao/openbao",
"ecosystem": "Go"
},
"database_specific": {
"source": "https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2026/09/GHSA-59w7-v8rr-pr4p/GHSA-59w7-v8rr-pr4p.json"
}
}
]- Related CVEs
- CVE-2026-71543
Source reference:
/aliases
Publisher severity
high
Source reference: /database_specific/severity
- Event
- #63898 · Revision 1
- Added to Heist Feed
- Publisher date