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HIGH severity

CVE-2021-42135 — vault

HIGH

CVE-2021-42135 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.1) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in github.com/hashicorp/vault. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.

Incorrect Privilege Assignment in HashiCorp Vault

Also known asBIT-vault-2021-42135GHSA-362v-wg5p-64w2GO-2022-0578
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 8, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.8%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs55th percentile — riskier than 55% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.43%0.85%1.28%0.2%0.8%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2021-42135 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 385,738 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
🐹github.com/hashicorp/vault

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise 1.8.x through 1.8.4 may have an unexpected interaction between glob-related policies and the Google Cloud secrets engine. Users may, in some situations, have more privileges than intended, e.g., a user with read permission for the /gcp/roleset/* path may be able to issue Google Cloud service account credentials.

Affected Packages

1 total
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐹Gogithub.com/hashicorp/vault≥ 1.8.0No fix

Affected Products

1 product · 2 configurations
Application
vaulthashicorp
≥ 1.8.0 && ≤ 1.8.4
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/hashicorp/vault, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Remediation status

    No patched version of github.com/hashicorp/vault has shipped for CVE-2021-42135 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.

  3. Mitigate without a patch

    Close the privilege gap rather than the entry point: audit which accounts, roles and service identities can reach the affected operation, drop the component to the least privilege it actually needs, and review file and directory permissions created by earlier installs — a default left in place is what makes this reachable.

Frequently Asked Questions

HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise 1.8.x through 1.8.4 may have an unexpected interaction between glob-related policies and the Google Cloud secrets engine. Users may, in some situations, have more privileges than intended, e.g., a user with read permission for the /gcp/roleset/* path may be able to issue Google Cloud service account credentials.
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CVE-2021-42135: vault (High 8.1)