CVE-2020-10661 HashiCorp Vault Improper Privilege Management

What is CVE-2020-10661?

CVE-2020-10661 is a critical missing authorization vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault, published on 23 Mar 2020. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise versions 0.11.0 through 1.3.3 may, under certain circumstances, have existing nested-path policies grant access to Namespaces created after-the-fact. Fixed in 1.3.4.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-10661?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/hashicorp/vault and vault. It affects 1 product.

Products include Hashicorp Vault.

How do I fix CVE-2020-10661?

Upgrade github.com/hashicorp/vault to 1.3.4 or later.

Upgrade, and check permissions on every request on the server, not only in the interface. More about Missing authorization.

Is CVE-2020-10661 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-10661 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Hashicorp Vault

• CVE-2020-35192 Hardcoded credentials in n/a Critical 9.8
• CVE-2020-12757 Improper Input Validation in HashiCorp Vault Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-6000 Arbitrary Remote Code Execution via Plugin Catalog Abuse Critical 9.1
• CVE-2022-40186 HashiCorp Vault vulnerable to incorrect metadata access Critical 9.1
• CVE-2022-36129 Missing authorization in n/a Critical 9.1

All Hashicorp Vault vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BIT-vault-2020-10661, GHSA-j6vv-vv26-rh7c, GO-2024-2485.