HashiCorp Vault: slash injection in templated policy paths grants access to unintended paths

Impact

A policy that interpolates an identity value into a path template can be made to render additional path segments if the attacker can put slash characters into that value, silently widening the policy past what the operator wrote. The result is an authenticated Vault client reading or writing secrets it was never granted. On a GPU fleet Vault is usually where the registry pull credentials, node join tokens, cloud API keys and per-tenant object-store credentials live, so a widened policy crosses tenant boundaries wherever templated policies key off entity metadata or aliases. Attack complexity is rated high because the attacker must control the referenced identity value in the first place.

Who can reach it

Authenticated Vault client that can influence an identity value (entity name, alias, or metadata) referenced by a templated policy path. Network access to the Vault API; no host access.

What to do

Upgrade to Vault Community Edition 2.0.4, or Vault Enterprise 2.0.4, 1.21.9, 1.20.14 or 1.19.20. This is a rolling upgrade of the Vault cluster with a standby-first, step-down sequence and a restart of each node's Vault service - no GPU node is touched, but every client reconnects to the new active node. Alongside the upgrade, audit templated policies for path segments that interpolate values a client can set.

References

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