Security Bulletin
Summary
Consul Community Edition and Consul Enterprise 1.19.1 through 2.0.2 did not enforce the session:write ACL permission for session deletion operations submitted through the transaction API. An authenticated caller with network access to the Consul server RPC port could delete arbitrary sessions without holding the required permission. This vulnerability, CVE-2026-19016, is fixed in Consul 2.0.3 and Consul Enterprise 1.21.17, 1.22.11, and 2.0.3.
Vulnerability Details
CVEID: CVE-2026-19016
DESCRIPTION: The transaction handler enforced ACL checks for several operation types but did not include a corresponding check for session deletion operations. The dedicated session API correctly requires session:write permission before permitting a session to be modified or deleted. Because this check was absent from the transaction path, a caller could perform session deletion operations without holding the required permission. Exploitation requires network access to the Consul server RPC port and knowledge of the randomly-generated session ID. Enabling mutual TLS on the RPC port limits unauthenticated exploitation by requiring callers to hold a valid client certificate, but does not fully mitigate the issue for authenticated callers that lack session:write permission. Successful exploitation could disrupt distributed locks, leader election workflows, and service health coordination that rely on sessions.
CWE: CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory (Path Traversal)
CVSS Source: HashiCorp Inc.
CVSS Base score: 4.2
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L)
Affected Products and Versions
| Affected Product(s) | Version(s) |
| Consul Community Edition | affected from 1.19.1 up to 2.0.3 |
| Consul Enterprise | affected from 1.19.1 up to 2.0.3, unaffected from 1.21.17, 1.22.11 |
Remediation/Fixes
Customers should evaluate the risk associated with this issue and consider upgrading to Consul 2.0.3 or Consul Enterprise 1.21.17, 1.22.11, or 2.0.3.
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References
Acknowledgement
This issue was reported by Andres Cruciani.
Change History
07 Aug 2026: Initial Publication
*The CVSS Environment Score is customer environment specific and will ultimately impact the Overall CVSS Score. Customers can evaluate the impact of this vulnerability in their environments by accessing the links in the Reference section of this Security Bulletin.
Disclaimer
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Document Location
Worldwide
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Document Information
Modified date:
07 August 2026
Initial Publish date:
07 August 2026
UID
ibm17282996