CVE-2025-12044 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in github.com/hashicorp/vault. A fix is available for github.com/hashicorp/vault — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Vault Vulnerable to Denial of Service Due to Rate Limit Regression
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-12044.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2025-12044 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 389,824 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/hashicorp/vaultReal-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 and Vault Enterprise (“Vault”) are vulnerable to an unauthenticated denial of service when processing JSON payloads. This occurs due to a regression from a previous fix for [+HCSEC-2025-24+|https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2025-24-vault-denial-of-service-though-complex-json-payloads/76393] which allowed for processing JSON payloads before applying rate limits. This vulnerability, CVE-2025-12044, is fixed in Vault Community Edition 1.21.0 and Vault Enterprise 1.16.27, 1.19.11, 1.20.5, and 1.21.0.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/hashicorp/vault | ≥ 1.20.3&&< 1.21.0 | 1.21.0go get github.com/hashicorp/vault@v1.21.0 |
Affected Products
vaulthashicorpDetection & 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, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/hashicorp/vault to 1.21.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-12044 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2025-12044 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines 1.2 | openshift-pipelines/pipelines-cli-tkn-rhel9:1772694865 | RHSA-2026:3827 |
| Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer 1.3 | rhtas/fulcio-rhel9:1.3.1-1763543131 | RHSA-2025:21976 |
| Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer 1.3 | rhtas/rekor-cli-rhel9:1.3.1-1763547807 | RHSA-2025:21981 |
| Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer 1.3 | rhtas/timestamp-authority-rhel9:1.3.1-1763543194 | RHSA-2025:21984 |
| Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer 1.3 | rhtas/client-server-rhel9:1.3.1-1763550070 | RHSA-2025:21988 |
| Red Hat Trusted Artifact Signer 1.3 | rhtas/policy-controller-rhel9:0.0.2-1763550444 | RHSA-2025:22058 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-12044 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.