CyberArk Conjur is a secrets management and application identity solution widely used to secure infrastructure credentials. CVE-2025-49827 affects Conjur OSS versions 1.19.5 to 1.22.0 and Secrets Manager, Self-Hosted versions 13.1 to 13.5 and 13.6. The vulnerability arises from improper validation of AWS-signed headers used in the IAM authenticator component. Specifically, a malformed regular expression used to validate these headers can be manipulated by an attacker to redirect the authentication validation request that Secrets Manager sends to AWS to a malicious server under the attacker's control. This redirection effectively bypasses the IAM authentication mechanism, allowing the attacker to obtain the permissions associated with the targeted client identity. The flaw is categorized under CWE-807, which involves reliance on untrusted inputs in security decisions, highlighting that the system trusts external input without sufficient validation. Exploitation requires network access to the vulnerable service but does not require prior authentication or user interaction. The vulnerability impacts confidentiality and integrity by enabling unauthorized access to secrets and permissions. CyberArk has addressed this issue in Conjur OSS 1.22.1 and Secrets Manager 13.5.1 and 13.6.1. Organizations running affected versions should upgrade immediately to mitigate risk. No public exploits are currently known, but the critical CVSS score of 9.1 underscores the high risk posed by this vulnerability.

For European organizations, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive credentials and secrets managed by CyberArk Conjur. Since Conjur is often deployed in enterprise environments to secure access to cloud infrastructure and applications, successful exploitation could lead to unauthorized access to critical systems and data, potentially enabling lateral movement, data exfiltration, or disruption of services. The bypass of IAM authentication could allow attackers to impersonate legitimate clients, escalating privileges without detection. This is particularly concerning for sectors with stringent compliance requirements such as finance, healthcare, and government agencies across Europe. The impact is exacerbated in hybrid or multi-cloud environments where Conjur integrates with AWS IAM, as attackers could leverage this flaw to compromise cloud resources. The absence of known exploits in the wild provides a window for proactive mitigation, but the critical severity demands urgent attention.

European organizations should immediately verify their Conjur OSS and Secrets Manager versions and plan upgrades to Conjur OSS 1.22.1 or later and Secrets Manager 13.5.1 or 13.6.1 or later. Until patching is complete, organizations should restrict network access to the IAM authenticator endpoints to trusted hosts only and monitor network traffic for unusual redirection or DNS anomalies that could indicate exploitation attempts. Implement strict egress filtering to prevent unauthorized outbound connections from the Conjur server to unknown external IPs, which could be used in redirection attacks. Additionally, review and tighten IAM policies and audit logs for anomalous authentication requests or permission escalations. Employ runtime application self-protection (RASP) or web application firewalls (WAF) with custom rules to detect and block malformed header patterns or suspicious authentication flows. Regularly validate and test the integrity of authentication mechanisms through penetration testing and code audits focusing on input validation. Finally, maintain an incident response plan tailored to secrets management compromise scenarios.