CVE-2025-6203: HashiCorp Vault Community Edition Denial of Service Though Complex JSON Payloads

August 28, 2025 (updated August 29, 2025)

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.

References

discuss.hashicorp.com/
discuss.hashicorp.com/t/hcsec-2025-24-vault-denial-of-service-though-complex-json-payloads/76393
github.com/advisories/GHSA-8f82-53h8-2p34
github.com/hashicorp/vault
github.com/hashicorp/vault/commit/eedc2b7426f30e57e306229ce697ce81e203ab89
nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-6203

Code Behaviors & Features

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