VulnerabilityAwaiting Analysis

CVE-2026-88021

Consul and Consul Enterprise are vulnerable to an authorization bypass in the Connect service mesh that may allow a service to reach a destination it is not authorized to access.

HIGH 7.1EPSS 0.24%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.24%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

Consul and Consul Enterprise are vulnerable to an authorization bypass in the Connect service mesh that may allow a service to reach a destination it is not authorized to access. When building Envoy RBAC rules to enforce Connect intentions, Consul did not correctly escape certain characters in service names, namespaces, and partitions, causing the generated authorization rules to match more broadly than intended. This vulnerability (CVE-2026-88021) is fixed in Consul 2.0.4 and Consul Enterprise 1.21.18, 1.22.12 and 2.0.4.

CVSS 3.1: 7.1 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N
EPSS: 0.24% probability · 16th percentile
CISA KEV: Not listed
Weakness: CWE-185
Source: security@hashicorp.com

References

https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2026-37-consul-vulnerable-to-an-authorization-bypass-in-the-connect-service-mesh/77739

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