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OpenBao's Templated Policies Allow Privilege Escalation via Wildcard Characters

Type: advisorySource: OSV1 source record

## 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

Announced Source revision 1
Original source ↗

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

Linked CVE context

These ratings describe the referenced vulnerabilities and products. They are not a severity rating for every application using this dependency.

Event
#63898 · Revision 1
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