CVE-2025-59048: OpenBao AWS Plugin Vulnerable to Cross-Account IAM Role Impersonation in AWS Auth Method

Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 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: 2025-10-23 · updated 2026-10-08
Weakness: CWE-694

Description

OpenBao's AWS Plugin generates AWS access credentials based on IAM policies. Prior to version 0.1.1, the AWS Plugin is vulnerable to cross-account IAM role Impersonation in the AWS auth method. The vulnerability allows an IAM role from an untrusted AWS account to authenticate by impersonating a role with the same name in a trusted account, leading to unauthorized access. This impacts all users of the auth-aws plugin who operate in a multi-account AWS environment where IAM role names may not be unique across accounts. This vulnerability has been patched in version 0.1.1 of the auth-aws plugin. A workaround for this issue involves guaranteeing that IAM role names are unique across all AWS accounts that could potentially interact with your OpenBao environment, and to audit for any duplicate IAM roles.

Affected products

openbao Aws Plugin: before 0.1.1 — fixed in 0.1.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: openbao Aws Plugin 0.1.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2025-59048 or the next vulnerability affects your stack