CVE-2020-16251 HashiCorp Vault Authentication bypass

What is CVE-2020-16251?

CVE-2020-16251 is a high-severity authentication bypass vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault, published on 26 Aug 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 0.8.3 and newer, when configured with the GCP GCE auth method, may be vulnerable to authentication bypass. Fixed in 1.2.5, 1.3.8, 1.4.4, and 1.5.1.

Weakness: CWE-287

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-16251?

10 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-2020-16251?

Upgrade github.com/hashicorp/vault to a fixed version for your release line: 1.2.5, 1.3.8, 1.4.4 or 1.5.1.

Upgrade, and rotate credentials and sessions that may have been exposed. More about Authentication bypass.

Is CVE-2020-16251 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-16251 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-2020-16251, GHSA-4mp7-2m29-gqxf, GO-2024-2488.