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HashiCorp has recently fixed a critical vulnerability—CVE-2025-6000—in its secrets management tool, Vault. With a CVSS score of 9.1, this flaw could let privileged Vault operators run arbitrary code on the host system if misconfigured.
“A privileged Vault operator within the root namespace with write permission to sys/audit may obtain code execution on the underlying host if a plugin directory is set in Vault’s configuration,” HashiCorp stated in its official summary.
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The issue arises from Vault’s management of audit devices, which are meant to log API requests and responses. If misused, these devices can allow the writing of any files to disk.
A malicious user with access to the sys/audit endpoint could create a payload that is:
Written to the plugin directory using Vault’s file audit device.
Registered as a Vault external plugin.
Executed by the Vault process after calculating the required SHA256 hash (with help from the sys/audit-hash endpoint).
“While the SHA256 digest of the file is required for execution… it may be possible for a malicious operator to reproduce the exact contents of a given audit file and compute the hash,” the advisory warns.
This vulnerability affects all installations of:
Vault Community Edition prior to 1.20.1
Vault Enterprise prior to 1.20.1, 1.19.7, 1.18.12, and 1.16.23
However, HCP Vault Dedicated is not vulnerable. Thanks to its use of administrative namespaces, Vault Dedicated does not expose the sys/audit endpoint to users.
“This vulnerability cannot be exploited in HCP Vault Dedicated due to its use of administrative namespaces,” the advisory confirms.
HashiCorp strongly recommends that users:
Upgrade to the latest patched version right away. Check permissions for sys/audit in the root namespace. Don’t place plugin directories near audit log destinations. For overall upgrade advice, refer to HashiCorp’s guidance here.
