What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-16251

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.2 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-08-26 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-287

Description

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise versions 0.8.3 and newer, when configured with the GCP GCE auth method, may be vulnerable to authentication bypass. Fixed in 1.2.5, 1.3.8, 1.4.4, and 1.5.1.

Affected products

• HashiCorp Vault: from 0.8.3 before 1.2.5; from 1.3.0 before 1.3.8; from 1.4.0 before 1.4.4; from 1.5.0 before 1.5.1 — fixed in 1.2.5, 1.3.8, 1.4.4, 1.5.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: HashiCorp Vault 1.2.5, 1.3.8, 1.4.4, 1.5.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/159479/Hashicorp-Vault-GCP-IAM-Integration-Authentication-Bypass.html
• https://github.com/hashicorp/vault/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#151
• https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/category/vault/
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/159479/Hashicorp-Vault-GCP-IAM-Integration-Authentication-Bypass.html
• https://github.com/hashicorp/vault/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#151
• https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/category/vault/

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