CVE-2021-38553

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.4 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2021-08-13 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-281

Description

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise 1.4.0 through 1.7.3 initialized an underlying database file associated with the Integrated Storage feature with excessively broad filesystem permissions. Fixed in Vault and Vault Enterprise 1.8.0.

Affected products

HashiCorp Vault: from 1.4.0 before 1.8.0 — fixed in 1.8.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: HashiCorp Vault 1.8.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2021-20-vault-s-integrated-storage-backend-database-file-may-have-excessively-broad-permissions/28168
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202207-01
https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2021-20-vault-s-integrated-storage-backend-database-file-may-have-excessively-broad-permissions/28168
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202207-01

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