Juju affected by timing ownership claim attack on new external back-end secrets

Description

A race condition in the secrets management subsystem of Juju versions 3.0.0 through 3.6.18 allows an authenticated unit agent to claim ownership of a newly initialized secret. Between generating a Juju Secret ID and creating the secret's first revision, an attacker authenticated as another unit agent can claim ownership of a known secret. This leads to the attacking unit being able to read the content of the initial secret revision.

Impact

Between generating a Secret ID and creating the secret's first revision, an
attacker authenticated as another unit agent can claim ownership of a known
secret. This leads to the attacking unit being able to read the content of the
initial secret revision.

Patches

3.6.19

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2026-03-19 12:42:52 UTC
Updated
2026-03-19 12:42:53 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2026-03-19 12:42:52 UTC
NVD published
2026-03-18

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.01% 1.56%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
5.3 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
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.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-708 Incorrect Ownership Assignment

Credits

  • hpidcock (finder)

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
go github.com/juju/juju >= 3.0.0, < 3.6.19 3.6.19

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence