CVE-2025-52894 OpenBao Vulnerable to Unauthenticated Rekey Operation Cancellation

What is CVE-2025-52894?

CVE-2025-52894 is a medium-severity missing authorization vulnerability in openbao, published on 25 Jun 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

OpenBao exists to provide a software solution to manage, store, and distribute sensitive data including secrets, certificates, and keys. OpenBao before v2.3.0 allowed an attacker to perform unauthenticated, unaudited cancellation of root rekey and recovery rekey operations, effecting a denial of service. In OpenBao v2.2.0 and later, manually setting the configuration option `disable_unauthed_rekey_endpoints=true` allows an operator to deny these rarely-used endpoints on global listeners. A patch is available at commit fe75468822a22a88318c6079425357a02ae5b77b. In a future OpenBao release communicated on OpenBao's website, the maintainers will set this to `true` for all users and provide an authenticated alternative. As a workaround, if an active proxy or load balancer sits in front of OpenBao, an operator can deny requests to these endpoints from unauthorized IP ranges.

Weakness: CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-52894?

6 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/openbao/openbao and openbao. It affects 1 product.

Products include Openbao Openbao.

How do I fix CVE-2025-52894?

Upgrade github.com/openbao/openbao to 0.0.0-20250625150133-fe75468822a2 or later.

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

Is CVE-2025-52894 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-52894 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in openbao

• CVE-2026-33757 OpenBao lacks user confirmation for OIDC direct callback mode Critical 9.6
• CVE-2026-33758 OpenBao has Reflected XSS in its OIDC authentication error message Critical 9.4
• CVE-2025-54997 OpenBao: Privileged Operator May Execute Code on the Underlying Host Critical 9.1
• CVE-2025-64761 OpenBao Privileged Operator Identity Group Root Escalation High 7.5
• CVE-2025-59043 OpenBao vulnerable to denial of service via malicious JSON request processing High 7.5

Sources

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

Also known as BIT-openbao-2025-52894, CLEANSTART-2026-LK31103, GHSA-prpj-rchp-9j5h, GO-2025-3783.