CVE-2023-5954: Vault Requests Triggering Policy Checks May Lead To Unbounded Memory Consumption

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-11-09 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise inbound client requests triggering a policy check can lead to an unbounded consumption of memory. A large number of these requests may lead to denial-of-service. Fixed in Vault 1.15.2, 1.14.6, and 1.13.10.

Affected products

HashiCorp Vault: from 1.13.7 before 1.13.10; from 1.14.3 before 1.14.6; from 1.15.0 before 1.15.2 — fixed in 1.13.10, 1.14.6, 1.15.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: HashiCorp Vault 1.13.10, 1.14.6, 1.15.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2023-33-vault-requests-triggering-policy-checks-may-lead-to-unbounded-memory-consumption/59926
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20231227-0001/
https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2023-33-vault-requests-triggering-policy-checks-may-lead-to-unbounded-memory-consumption/59926
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20231227-0001/

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