Vulnerability · Published Sep 15, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-55776OpenBao: Transit secrets engine crashes on key creation with `derived: true` for asymmetric key types
Medium 6.5
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in openbao from openbao. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.6% (higher than 50% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. Prior to 2.5.5, an authenticated OpenBao caller with write access to transit/keys/* could terminate the server process by setting derived to true while the type parameter selected rsa-, ecdsa-, or ed25519. The Transit policy creation path in builtin/logical/transit/backend.go and sdk/helper/keysutil/policy.go could reach an error path that double-unlocked a mutex while handling this invalid asymmetric derived-key combination, causing a panic, no HTTP response, process exit, and denial of service. JSON and HCL key-creation requests can express the triggering combination. This issue is fixed in version 2.5.5.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/openbao/openbao | no fix listed | GHSA-8w8f-r2xv-4q4j |
| Go | github.com/openbao/openbao | 0.0.0-20260617104123-db57c62602b2 | GHSA-8w8f-r2xv-4q4j |
| Go | github.com/openbao/openbao | 0.0.0-20260617104123-db57c62602b2 | GO-2026-5267 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-617 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
References
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/security/advisories/GHSA-8w8f-r2xv-4q4j x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/pull/3309 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/pull/3312 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/commit/bb17827f3e33779a10166f7d0e61b191c0facef9 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/commit/db57c62602b25da12951f3f0edb888e7c4da61e5 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.5.5 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/openbao/openbao/releases/tag/v2.6.0 x_refsource_MISC