GHSA-7j6w-vvw2-5f9c BIT-openbao-2026-46405 CVE-2026-46405 GO-2026-5225
OpenBao's Kerberos Auth Method Accumulates Unaccessible Tokens
Medium
Go
- Severity
- 5.3 / 10
- Medium · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 0.62%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 49.57% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
- Fix
2.5.4- Upgrade github.com/openbao/openbao to this version or later
Description
Impact
In OpenBao's Kerberos auth method on the GET handler, or when an Authorization: Negotiate header is supplied, the response is includes a logical.Auth object in addition to an error message. This results in tokens being created with only the default policy, default TTL, and no entity information, which are hidden by the returned error message. No access to these tokens by the caller occurs and the authentication token is not ever made accessible outside of sys/raw. At most this could cause storage usage.
Patches
This is fixed in OpenBao v2.5.4.
Workarounds
Users may set a rate limit quota to limit the creation of these paths. As the path is unauthenticated, it isn't possible to deny access to it.
Reporter
This was discovered by an anonymous reporter.
Affected versions
Go
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| github.com/openbao/openbao | < 2.5.4 |
2.5.4 |
| github.com/openbao/openbao | all versions |
No fix yet |
How to fix
Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.
github.com/openbao/openbao Go → 2.5.4
- go
go get github.com/openbao/openbao@v2.5.4 && go mod tidy
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 5.3
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Low
Weakness
CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any intended restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated.
How to prevent it
- Requirements: Clearly specify the minimum and maximum expectations for capabilities, and dictate which behaviors are acceptable when resource allocation reaches limits.
- Architecture and Design: Limit the amount of resources that are accessible to unprivileged users. Set per-user limits for resources. Allow the system administrator to define these limits. Be careful to avoid CWE-410.
- Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place, and it will help the administrator to identify who is committing the abuse. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
- Implementation: Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
- Architecture and Design: For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
- Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, typically by using increasing time delays uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution can be difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply requires more resources on the part of the attacker.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
- Architecture and Design, Implementation: If the program must fail, ensure that it fails gracefully (fails closed). There may be a temptation to simply let the program fail poorly in cases such as low memory conditions, but an attacker may be able to assert control before the software has fully exited. Alternately, an uncontrolled failure could cause cascading problems with other downstream components; for example, the program could send a signal to a downstream process so the process immediately knows that a problem has occurred and has a better chance of recovery. Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.
- Operation, Architecture and Design: Use quotas or other resource-limiting settings provided by the operating system or environment. For example, when managing system resources in POSIX, setrlimit() can be used to set limits for certain types of resources, and getrlimit() can determine how many resources are available. However, these functions are not available on all operating systems. When the current levels get close to the maximum that is defined for the application (see CWE-770), then limit the allocation of further resources to privileged users; alternately, begin releasing resources for less-privileged users. While this mitigation may protect the system from attack, it will not necessarily stop attackers from adversely impacting other users. Ensure that the application performs the appropriate error checks and error handling in case resources become unavailable (CWE-703).
References
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-xp3c-3jw3-4vcr OpenBao Skips Stricter Deny Policy for LIST operations | Medium | Also affects github.com/openbao/openbao |
| GHSA-34fc-gh42-pj53 OpenBao's Recovery Mode Vulnerable To Token Leakage via Timing Attack | Critical | Also affects github.com/openbao/openbao |
| GHSA-444v-8vxr-p36h OpenBao Agent Writes Secrets to Stdout | Low | Also affects github.com/openbao/openbao |
| GHSA-59w7-v8rr-pr4p OpenBao's Templated Policies Allow Privilege Escalation via Wildcard Characters | High | Also affects github.com/openbao/openbao |
| GHSA-8w8f-r2xv-4q4j OpenBao: Transit secrets engine crashes on key creation with `derived: true` for asymmetric key types | Medium | Also affects github.com/openbao/openbao |
| GHSA-mwr2-wmgp-crj6 OpenBao's System Backend allows Unauthorized Management of the containing Namespace | Low | Also affects github.com/openbao/openbao |
| GHSA-c36x-h252-g9x2 OpenBao: Cross-namespace lease revocation/renewal via canonical sys/leases/{revoke,renew} — incomplete fix of CVE-2026-45808 | Low | Also affects github.com/openbao/openbao |
| GHSA-6mwx-4547-5vc9 OpenBao: LDAPi ldaputil (wrong escape func) | Medium | Also affects github.com/openbao/openbao |
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