CVE-2023-25000 | Vault Vulnerable to Cache-Timing Attacks During Seal and Unseal Operations

HashiCorp Vault's implementation of Shamir's secret sharing used precomputed table lookups, and was vulnerable to cache-timing attacks. An attacker with access to, and the ability to observe a large number of unseal operations on the host through a side channel may reduce the search space of a brute force effort to recover the Shamir shares. Fixed in Vault 1.13.1, 1.12.5, and 1.11.9.

Published: 2023-03-29 Last update: 2026-06-17 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2023-25000 is rated Low Risk (24.1/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.21%). Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2023-25000

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.04% 0.21% +0.17%
2 2025-03-30 0.07% 0.04% -0.04%
3 2025-03-29 — 0.07% —

Full EPSS history (4 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2023-25000

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.0 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:H)
Even with access, the exploit needs extra luck, timing, or a fussy environment to actually work.
Privileges required (PR:H)
They need powerful rights—admin, root, or similar—before this pays off.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 0.6 4.0 [email protected]
4.7 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:H)
Even with access, the exploit needs extra luck, timing, or a fussy environment to actually work.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 1.0 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2023-25000

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2023-25000

GHSA-vq4h-9ghm-qmrr · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: go — HashiCorp Vault's implementation of Shamir's secret sharing vulnerable to cache-timing attacks

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-25000

vendor priority summary link
alpine medium CVE-2023-25000: 1 source package rows (vault); 9 state rows across 1 repos (edge-community); fixed 0, open 9. https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2023-25000
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-25000

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-25000

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
hashicorp vault < 1.11.9 cpe:2.3:a:hashicorp:vault:*:*:*:*:-:*:*:*
hashicorp vault < 1.11.9 cpe:2.3:a:hashicorp:vault:*:*:*:*:enterprise:*:*:*
hashicorp vault >= 1.12.0, < 1.12.5 cpe:2.3:a:hashicorp:vault:*:*:*:*:-:*:*:*
hashicorp vault >= 1.12.0, < 1.12.5 cpe:2.3:a:hashicorp:vault:*:*:*:*:enterprise:*:*:*
hashicorp vault >= 1.13.0, < 1.13.1 cpe:2.3:a:hashicorp:vault:*:*:*:*:-:*:*:*
hashicorp vault >= 1.13.0, < 1.13.1 cpe:2.3:a:hashicorp:vault:*:*:*:*:enterprise:*:*:*

References for CVE-2023-25000

cvelogic Threat Intelligence