GHSA-q34h-97wf-8r8j
HIGHvault-cli contains possible RCE when reading user-defined data
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
Blast Radius
vault-cliReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?
vault-cli features the ability for rendering templated values (as explained in the documentation). When a secret starts with the prefix !template!, vault-cli interprets the rest of the contents of the secret as a Jinja2 template.
Jinja2 is a powerful templating engine and it's not designed to safely render arbitrary templates. An attacker controlling a jinja2 template rendered on a machine can trigger arbitrary code, making this a Remote Code Execution (RCE) risk.
If the content of the vault can be completely trusted, then this is not a problem. Otherwise, if your threat model includes cases where an attacker can manipulate a secret value read from the vault using vault-cli, then this vulnerability may impact you.
This does not impact vault itself, except for the fact that the attacker, having an RCE on the machine that executes vault-cli, may abuse the token that vault-cli uses, to read, write or delete other data from the vault.
Patches
Has the problem been patched? What versions should users upgrade to?
In 3.0.0, the code related to interpreting vault templated secrets has been removed entirely.
Workarounds
Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?
Using the environment variable VAULT_CLI_RENDER=false or the flag --no-render (placed between vault-cli and the subcommand, e.g. vault-cli --no-render get-all) or adding render: false to the vault-cli configuration yaml file disables rendering and removes the vulnerability.
Using the python library, you can use: vault_cli.get_client(render=False) when creating your client to get a client that will not render templated secrets and thus operates securely.
References
Are there any links users can visit to find out more?
Here's an article explaining how jinja2 templates might be exploited to have side effects: https://podalirius.net/en/publications/grehack-2021-optimizing-ssti-payloads-for-jinja2/
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
- Open an issue in the vault-cli repo
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | vault-cli | ≥ 0.7.0&&< 3.0.0 | 3.0.0 |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for vault-cli. 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 vault-cli to 3.0.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-q34h-97wf-8r8j 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 GHSA-q34h-97wf-8r8j 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 GHSA-q34h-97wf-8r8j. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-q34h-97wf-8r8j in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-q34h-97wf-8r8j across PyPI dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.