CVE-2021-43998 HashiCorp Vault Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

What is CVE-2021-43998?

CVE-2021-43998 is a medium-severity missing authorization vulnerability in Hashicorp Vault, published on 30 Nov 2021. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.

Official description

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise 0.11.0 up to 1.7.5 and 1.8.4 templated ACL policies would always match the first-created entity alias if multiple entity aliases exist for a specified entity and mount combination, potentially resulting in incorrect policy enforcement. Fixed in Vault and Vault Enterprise 1.7.6, 1.8.5, and 1.9.0.

Weakness: CWE-732

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-43998?

6 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-2021-43998?

Upgrade github.com/hashicorp/vault to a fixed version for your release line: 1.7.6 or 1.8.5.

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

Is CVE-2021-43998 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-43998 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-2021-43998, GHSA-pfmw-vj74-ph8g, GO-2022-0611.