CVE-2026-71543: OpenBao's Templated Policies Allow Privilege Escalation via Wildcard Characters
Impact
ACL Policies
OpenBao supports "templated polices": Policies with placeholders that are replaced at evaluation time.
This allows you to write a single policy which e.g. grants user "alice" access to all entries in a key value engine prefixed with alice/ while granting "bob" access to bob/, "carol" access to carol/, etc.
If the data used in the template can be controlled by an attacker (e.g. your system allows the user to freely select their username) and "globbing" characters are considered valid ( e.g. is a valid username) they will be able to escalate their privileges.
The problematic characters are , + and /.
PKI Secrets Engine allowedurisanstemplate and alloweddomains Polices
The PKI secrets engine allows you to limit the "common names" a user can requests a TLS certificate for. Similar to the ACL polices this allows you to restrict e.g. "alice" to alice.example.com, "bob" to bob.example.com, etc. via templates.
Again, if an attacker can control this data freely, they can trick the PKI engine into using e.g. the .example.com glob effectively allowing them to issue certificates for any subdomain of example.com
The problematic character in this case is .
SSH Secrets Engine allowedusers and alloweddomains Polices
The SSH secrets engine allows you to limit the "principal" a user can request as SSH certificate for. Similar to ACL and PKI, this allows templates.
The problematic character in this case is , as the template result is split at all commas and each entry will be allowed.
Am I affected?
You are affected, if a) you use a templated policy (ACL, PKI or SSH) and b) your users can modify data used by your template freely.
If you can guarantee that the data used in your templates will never contain the problematic characters, you are not affected. For example, if you use {{ identity.entity.id }} in your policy, you are not affected, because identity.entity.id is randomly generated by OpenBao.
Even with this vulnerability patched: Using user controllable data in your policies is probably not the best idea.
Patches
All three have been patched in OpenBao v2.6.0.
Other sources
OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. Prior to 2.6.0, templated ACL, PKI, and SSH policies could substitute attacker-controlled identity data without rejecting syntax-significant characters. In ACL templated policies, asterisks, plus signs, and slashes could alter path matching. In PKI allowedurisanstemplate and alloweddomains policies, an asterisk could broaden certificate issuance to unauthorized domains. In SSH allowedusers and alloweddomains policies, a comma could add unauthorized principals. Exploitation requires a deployment to use templated policy data that users can freely modify; templates based on the randomly generated identity.entity.id value are not affected. This could allow privilege escalation, unauthorized access, and unauthorized certificate issuance. This issue is fixed in version 2.6.0.
— MITRE
Affected Software
Remediation
Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.
- Upgrade
Upgrade
go/github.com/openbao/openbaoto a version that resolves this vulnerability.Fixed in 0.0.0-20260710001938-2d4ebafec5c5 - Upgrade
Upgrade
OpenBaoto a version that resolves this vulnerability.Fixed in 2.6.0
Event History
Frequently Asked Questions
Which deployments are actually exposed to this issue?
Exposure requires templated ACL, PKI, or SSH policy fields that substitute identity data users can freely modify. Templates using the randomly generated identity.entity.id value are not affected.
What attacker-controlled characters are relevant for each policy type?
For ACL templated policies, asterisks, plus signs, and slashes can change path matching. For PKI allowed_uri_sans_template and allowed_domains policies, an asterisk can broaden certificate issuance; for SSH allowed_users and allowed_domains policies, a comma can add unauthorized principals.
What is the remediation?
Upgrade OpenBao to version 2.6.0, which fixes the issue. Until upgrading, review templated policy data and avoid using user-modifiable identity values in the affected ACL, PKI, and SSH policy fields.