Vulnerability Monitor

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CVE-2012-5571


A flaw was found in OpenStack Keystone. This vulnerability allows remote authenticated users to bypass intended authorization restrictions. This occurs because OpenStack Keystone does not properly handle EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) tokens when a user's role has been removed from a tenant. An attacker can leverage a token associated with a removed user role to gain unauthorized access.


Security Impact Summary

This vulnerability carries a MEDIUM severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 5.4, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network with relatively low complexity without requiring user interaction requiring only low-level privileges . The vulnerability impacts limited data confidentiality, limited integrity, for affected systems. Impacting 2 products from openstack, from openstack organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.

Historical Context

Documented in 2012, this vulnerability occurred amid the cloud computing expansion era, where traditional network perimeter security models were being reevaluated. Organizations were transitioning from isolated infrastructure to interconnected systems, creating new attack surfaces that vulnerabilities like this could exploit.


Published

2012-12-18T01:55:03.570

Last Modified

2026-04-07T07:16:22.450

Status

Deferred

Source

[email protected]

Severity

CVSSv3.1: 5.4 (MEDIUM)

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:N/AC:M/Au:S/C:N/I:P/A:N

  • Access Vector: NETWORK
  • Access Complexity: MEDIUM
  • Authentication: SINGLE
  • Confidentiality Impact: NONE
  • Integrity Impact: PARTIAL
  • Availability Impact: NONE
Exploitability Score

6.8

Impact Score

2.9

Weaknesses
  • Type: Primary
    CWE-639
  • Type: Secondary
    CWE-255

Affected Vendors & Products
Type Vendor Product Version/Range Vulnerable?
Application openstack essex 2012.1 Yes
Application openstack folsom 2012.2 Yes

References

How SecUtils Interprets This CVE

SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For openstack's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.