HashiCorp Vault's implementation of Shamir's secret sharing vulnerable to cache-timing attacks

CVE-2023-25000 → View on GitHub ↗ View on CVE.org ↗ View on NVD ↗

Description

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.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
—
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2023-03-30 03:30:38 UTC
Updated
2023-06-13 23:52:07 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2023-04-07 19:23:01 UTC
NVD published
2023-03-29

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.03% 9.41%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
4.7 3.1 —
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.

Identifiers

Type Value
GHSA GHSA-vq4h-9ghm-qmrr ↗
CVE CVE-2023-25000 ↗

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-203 Observable Discrepancy
CWE-208 Observable Timing Discrepancy

Affected packages (3)

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

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
go github.com/hashicorp/vault < 1.11.9 1.11.9 —
go github.com/hashicorp/vault >= 1.12.0, < 1.12.5 1.12.5 —
go github.com/hashicorp/vault >= 1.13.0, < 1.13.1 1.13.1 —

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence