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LDAP Injection in OpenBao ldaputil LDAP authentication

IdentifiersCVE-2026-55770CWE-90

CVE-2026-55770 is an LDAP injection vulnerability in OpenBao's shared ldaputil library. According to the provided advisory, the issue is caused by using RFC 4514 distinguished-name escaping instead of RFC 4515 LDAP filter escaping when constructing LDAP bind/search values from user-controlled usernames. The vulnerable logic is in the LDAP authentication flow, specifically in filter construction paths in sdk/helper/ldaputil/client.go, including the UPNDomain and UserDN/UserAttr paths in GetUserDN(). Because attacker-controlled username input is incorporated into LDAP filter context with incorrect escaping, a crafted username can inject LDAP filter syntax and alter directory lookup behavior.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation can cause OpenBao to resolve or bind an authentication token to a different LDAP user than the one actually authenticating. This may allow impersonation of another directory account, including an administrative account, resulting in unauthorized access to that user's secrets, policies, and administrative capabilities within OpenBao.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Until patched, reduce exposure by enforcing least privilege for LDAP service accounts and tightening LDAP authentication configuration. The advisory specifically recommends using restrictive UserFilter configurations with explicit attribute constraints to limit search scope, and reviewing deployments that use the LDAP authentication backend, especially Active Directory UPNDomain or UserDN/UserAttr binding paths.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply the vendor fix when available. The provided advisory states that remediation requires replacing uses of EscapeLDAPValue with ldap.EscapeFilter in the affected LDAP filter construction paths in sdk/helper/ldaputil/client.go, specifically the UPNDomain and UserDN/UserAttr paths in GetUserDN(). The advisory also recommends auditing all call sites of EscapeLDAPValue across the codebase to ensure it is not used in LDAP filter context.

PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

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VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

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VendorProductType

OpenbaoOpenbaoapplication

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ACTIVITY FEED

Recent activity

No public activity tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

0 SOURCESView more in app

No public activity observed for this vulnerability.

What this page doesn’t show

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Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence

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Associated malware

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Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

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Social activity