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SCA: security update for vault-cli (GHSA-q34h-97wf-8r8j)

medium Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security Plugin ID 417822

Description

There are packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability referenced in the following CVE:

 - vault-cli is a configurable command-line interface tool (and python library) to interact with Hashicorp
 Vault. In versions before 3.0.0 vault-cli features the ability for rendering templated values. When a
 secret starts with the prefix `!template!`, vault-cli interprets the rest of the contents of the secret as
 a Jinja2 template. Jinja2 is a powerful templating engine and is not designed to safely render arbitrary
 templates. An attacker controlling a jinja2 template rendered on a machine can trigger arbitrary code,
 making this a Remote Code Execution (RCE) risk. If the content of the vault can be completely trusted,
 then this is not a problem. Otherwise, if your threat model includes cases where an attacker can
 manipulate a secret value read from the vault using vault-cli, then this vulnerability may impact you. In
 3.0.0, the code related to interpreting vault templated secrets has been removed entirely. Users are
 advised to upgrade as soon as possible. For users unable to upgrade a workaround does exist. Using the
 environment variable `VAULT_CLI_RENDER=false` or the flag `--no-render` (placed between `vault-cli` and
 the subcommand, e.g. `vault-cli --no-render get-all`) or adding `render: false` to the vault-cli
 configuration yaml file disables rendering and removes the vulnerability. Using the python library, you
 can use: `vault_cli.get_client(render=False)` when creating your client to get a client that will not
 render templated secrets and thus operates securely. (CVE-2021-43837)

See Also

https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-q34h-97wf-8r8j

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 417822

Version: Revision 1.6

Type: Local

Family: SCA Checks

Published: 1/23/2025

Updated: 7/2/2026

Supported Sensors: Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: High

Score: 7.7

Percentile: 99.19

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Medium

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 9

Temporal Score: 7

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2021-43837

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.1

Temporal Score: 8.2

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.3

Threat Score: 5.3

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:P

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:A/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

Vulnerability Information

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 12/16/2021

Vulnerability Publication Date: 12/16/2021

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2021-43837