A newly uncovered security weakness in HashiCorp’s Vault Terraform Provider has raised serious concerns, as it gives attackers a path to access Vault without any valid authentication. The flaw, identified as CVE-2025-13357, particularly impacts environments that rely on LDAP-based login for Vault. At the center of this issue is an incorrect default configuration within the provider, which unintentionally weakens the expected authentication controls. The problem originates from the provider’s default behavior, where the deny_null_bind parameter was set to false for LDAP authentication. This seemingly small configuration oversight resulted in a dangerous loophole. Because some LDAP servers allow anonymous or unauthenticated binds, the misconfiguration effectively opened the door for unauthorized users to establish a session with Vault without supplying proper credentials, creating a direct authentication bypass scenario. If exploited, this gap can expose highly sensitive information stored within Vault, including confidential secrets, encryption keys, and other security-critical data. Such unauthorized access poses a major threat to any organization depending on Vault for secure secret management. Recognizing the severity, HashiCorp has issued patches to correct the default settings and strengthen the authentication flow. To safeguard systems, organizations are advised to upgrade to Vault Terraform Provider v5.5.0, which now ensures the deny_null_bind setting defaults to true. HashiCorp also recommends updating Vault to Community Edition 1.21.1 or Enterprise versions 1.21.1, 1.20.6, 1.19.12, or 1.16.28. Additionally, administrators should manually verify that the deny_null_bind parameter is explicitly enabled in all LDAP configurations. Those running older provider versions must update their Terraform files immediately to close the security gap and prevent potential exploitation.
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