CVE-2020-10595
pam-krb5 before 4.9 has a buffer overflow that might cause remote code execution in situations involving supplemental prompting by a Kerberos library.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (4.78%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
pam-krb5 before 4.9 has a buffer overflow that might cause remote code execution in situations involving supplemental prompting by a Kerberos library. It may overflow a buffer provided by the underlying Kerberos library by a single '\0' byte if an attacker responds to a prompt with an answer of a carefully chosen length. The effect may range from heap corruption to stack corruption depending on the structure of the underlying Kerberos library, with unknown effects but possibly including code execution. This code path is not used for normal authentication, but only when the Kerberos library does supplemental prompting, such as with PKINIT or when using the non-standard no_prompt PAM configuration option.
- CVSS 3.1
- 9.8 CRITICALCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- EPSS
- 4.78% probability · 92th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-120
- Affected
- pam-krb5 project/pam-krb5 · debian/debian linux
- Source
- cve@mitre.org
EPSS 4.8% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/03/31/1Mailing List, Patch, Third Party Advisory
- https://github.com/rra/pam-krb5/commit/e7879e27a37119fad4faf133a9f70bdcdc75d760Patch, Third Party Advisory
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/04/msg00000.htmlMailing List, Third Party Advisory
- https://usn.ubuntu.com/4314-1/
- https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4648Third Party Advisory
- https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/pam-krb5/security/2020-03-30.html
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/03/31/1Mailing List, Patch, Third Party Advisory
- https://github.com/rra/pam-krb5/commit/e7879e27a37119fad4faf133a9f70bdcdc75d760Patch, Third Party Advisory
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/04/msg00000.htmlMailing List, Third Party Advisory
- https://usn.ubuntu.com/4314-1/
- https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4648Third Party Advisory
- https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/pam-krb5/security/2020-03-30.html
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.