A malicious user may submit a specially-crafted complex payload that otherwise meets the default request size limit which results in excessive memory and CPU consumption of Vault. This may lead to a timeout in Vault’s auditing subroutine, potentially resulting in the Vault server to become unresponsive. This vulnerability, CVE-2025-6203, is fixed in Vault Community Edition 1.20.3 and Vault Enterprise 1.20.3, 1.19.9, 1.18.14, and 1.16.25.
The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated, in violation of the intended security policy for that actor.