VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2025-12044

Vault and Vault Enterprise (“Vault”) are vulnerable to an unauthenticated denial of service when processing JSON payloads.

HIGH 7.5EPSS 0.53%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.53%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

Vault and Vault Enterprise (“Vault”) are vulnerable to an unauthenticated denial of service when processing JSON payloads. This occurs due to a regression from a previous fix for [+HCSEC-2025-24+|https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2025-24-vault-denial-of-service-though-complex-json-payloads/76393] which allowed for processing JSON payloads before applying rate limits. This vulnerability, CVE-2025-12044, is fixed in Vault Community Edition 1.21.0 and Vault Enterprise 1.16.27, 1.19.11, 1.20.5, and 1.21.0.

CVSS 3.1: 7.5 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS: 0.53% probability · 43th percentile
CISA KEV: Not listed
Weakness: CWE-770
Affected: hashicorp/vault
Source: security@hashicorp.com

References

https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2025-31-vault-vulnerable-to-denial-of-service-due-to-rate-limit-regression/76710Vendor Advisory

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.