High severity · published Sep 21, 2026
CVE-2026-71543
OpenBao's Templated Policies Allow Privilege Escalation via Wildcard Characters
7.5
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
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 allowed_uri_sans_template and allowed_domains policies, an asterisk could broaden certificate issuance to unauthorized domains. In SSH allowed_users and allowed_domains 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.
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 36% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OP
openbao · openbao
<2.6.0 · source: vendor
Affected product
OP
openbao
openbao
More from openbao
9.8
CVE-2024-2048
Vault and Vault Enterprise (“Vault”) TLS certificate auth method did not correctly validate client certificates when configured with a non-CA certificate as trusted certificate
9.2
CVE-2026-63132
OpenBao's Recovery Mode Vulnerable To Token Leakage via Timing Attack
9.1
CVE-2025-54997
OpenBao: Privileged Operator May Execute Code on the Underlying Host
8.8
CVE-2024-7594
Vault’s SSH secrets engine did not require the valid_principals list to contain a value by default
8.3
CVE-2026-33757
OpenBao lacks user confirmation for OIDC direct callback mode