CVE-2025-49827
Published: 15 July 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-49827 is a critical-severity Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision (CWE-807) vulnerability in Cyberark Conjur. Its CVSS base score is 9.1 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 30.8% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2025-49827 is a vulnerability in the IAM authenticator of Conjur OSS versions 1.19.5 through 1.22.0 and Secrets Manager, Self-Hosted (formerly Conjur Enterprise) versions 13.1 through 13.5 and 13.6. Conjur provides secrets management and application identity for infrastructure. The flaw stems from a malformed regular expression that enables attackers to redirect authentication validation requests sent to AWS to a malicious server under their control, bypassing the IAM authenticator. It is rated with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) and is associated with CWE-807 (Reliance on Untrusted Inputs in a Security Decision).
An attacker capable of manipulating headers signed by AWS can exploit this issue remotely with low complexity and no privileges or user interaction required. By altering the headers, the attacker redirects the validation request to their controlled server, impersonating a legitimate client and gaining the permissions associated with that client's authentication. This results in high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts, potentially allowing unauthorized access to secrets and resources managed by the affected Conjur instances.
Advisories recommend upgrading to fixed versions: Conjur OSS 1.22.1, Secrets Manager Self-Hosted 13.5.1, and 13.6.1. Detailed information is available in the GitHub security advisory (GHSA-gmc5-9mpc-xg75) and release notes for Conjur v1.22.1, along with announcements on oss-security mailing lists.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-21537
Vulnerability details
Conjur provides secrets management and application identity for infrastructure. Conjur OSS versions 1.19.5 through 1.22.0 and Secrets Manager, Self-Hosted (formerly known as Conjur Enterprise) 13.1 through 13.5 and 13.6 are vulnerable to bypass of the IAM authenticator. An attacker who…
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can manipulate the headers signed by AWS can take advantage of a malformed regular expression to redirect the authentication validation request that Secrets Manager, Self-Hosted sends to AWS to a malicious server controlled by the attacker. This redirection could result in a bypass of the Secrets Manager, Self-Hosted IAM Authenticator, granting the attacker the permissions granted to the client whose request was manipulated. This issue affects both Secrets Manager, Self-Hosted (formerly Conjur Enterprise) and Conjur OSS. Conjur OSS version 1.22.1 and Secrets Manager, Self-Hosted versions 13.5.1 and 13.6.1 fix the issue.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Direct remote authentication bypass in a public-facing secrets management service (Conjur IAM authenticator) via header manipulation and regex flaw, enabling unauthorized access without credentials.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly mitigates the vulnerability by identifying, reporting, and applying vendor patches that fix the malformed regular expression in the IAM authenticator.
Validates untrusted inputs such as manipulated AWS-signed headers to prevent redirection of authentication validation requests to malicious servers.
Limits impact of successful authenticator bypass by enforcing least privilege on the permissions associated with impersonated clients.