Vulnerability from bitnami_vulndb
Published
2026-07-27 05:48
Modified
2026-07-27 06:08
Summary
OpenBao vulnerable to denial of service via malicious JSON request processing
Details

OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. In OpenBao versions prior to 2.4.1, JSON objects after decoding may use significantly more memory than their serialized version. It is possible to craft a JSON payload to maximize the factor between serialized memory usage and deserialized memory usage, similar to a zip bomb, with factors reaching approximately 35. This can be used to circumvent the max_request_size configuration parameter which is intended to protect against denial of service attacks. The request body is parsed into a map very early in the request handling chain before authentication, which means an unauthenticated attacker can send a specifically crafted JSON object and cause an out-of-memory crash. Additionally, for requests with large numbers of strings, the audit subsystem can consume large quantities of CPU. The vulnerability is fixed in version 2.4.1.

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{
  "affected": [
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "Bitnami",
        "name": "openbao",
        "purl": "pkg:bitnami/openbao"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "2.4.1"
            }
          ],
          "type": "SEMVER"
        }
      ],
      "severity": [
        {
          "score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H",
          "type": "CVSS_V3"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "aliases": [
    "CVE-2025-59043"
  ],
  "database_specific": {
    "cpes": [
      "cpe:2.3:a:openbao:openbao:*:*:*:*:*:go:*:*"
    ],
    "severity": "High"
  },
  "details": "OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. In OpenBao versions prior to 2.4.1, JSON objects after decoding may use significantly more memory than their serialized version. It is possible to craft a JSON payload to maximize the factor between serialized memory usage and deserialized memory usage, similar to a zip bomb, with factors reaching approximately 35. This can be used to circumvent the max_request_size configuration parameter which is intended to protect against denial of service attacks. The request body is parsed into a map very early in the request handling chain before authentication, which means an unauthenticated attacker can send a specifically crafted JSON object and cause an out-of-memory crash. Additionally, for requests with large numbers of strings, the audit subsystem can consume large quantities of CPU. The vulnerability is fixed in version 2.4.1.",
  "id": "BIT-openbao-2025-59043",
  "modified": "2026-07-27T06:08:49.409Z",
  "published": "2026-07-27T05:48:59.037Z",
  "references": [
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/openbao/openbao/blob/788536bd3e10818a7b4fb00aac6affc23388e5a9/http/logical.go#L50"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/openbao/openbao/commit/d418f238bc99adc72c73109faf574cc2b672880c"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/openbao/openbao/pull/1756"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/openbao/openbao/security/advisories/GHSA-g46h-2rq9-gw5m"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-59043"
    }
  ],
  "schema_version": "1.6.2",
  "summary": "OpenBao vulnerable to denial of service via malicious JSON request processing"
}



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Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.

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Nomenclature

  • Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
  • Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
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  • Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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  • Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.


Detection rules are retrieved from Rulezet.