CVE-2024-8185
HIGHCVE-2024-8185 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-636 vulnerability in github.com/hashicorp/vault. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2024-8185 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Vault Vulnerable to Denial of Service When Processing Raft Join Requests
Blast Radius
github.com/hashicorp/vault🐹github.com/openbao/openbaoReal-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
Vault Community and Vault Enterprise (“Vault”) clusters using Vault’s Integrated Storage backend are vulnerable to a denial-of-service (DoS) attack through memory exhaustion through a Raft cluster join API endpoint . An attacker may send a large volume of requests to the endpoint which may cause Vault to consume excessive system memory resources, potentially leading to a crash of the underlying system and the Vault process itself.
This vulnerability, CVE-2024-8185, is fixed in Vault Community 1.18.1 and Vault Enterprise 1.18.1, 1.17.8, and 1.16.12.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/hashicorp/vault | ≥ 1.2.0&&< 1.18.1 | 1.18.1 |
| 🐹Go | github.com/openbao/openbao | all versions | 2.0.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/hashicorp/vault. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update github.com/hashicorp/vault to 1.18.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-8185 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2024-8185 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2024-8185. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-8185 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2024-8185 across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.