CVE-2020-16846
SaltStack Salt Shell Injection Vulnerability
Does this matter?
Known to be exploited in the wild (CISA KEV, CISA remediation deadline 3 May 2022). Treat as an emergency change: patch or isolate now, then hunt for prior compromise.
Description
An issue was discovered in SaltStack Salt through 3002. Sending crafted web requests to the Salt API, with the SSH client enabled, can result in shell injection.
- 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
- 99.59% probability · 100th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Listed 3 November 2021 · due 3 May 2022
- Weakness
- CWE-78
- Affected
- saltstack/salt · debian/debian linux · fedoraproject/fedora · opensuse/leap
- Source
- cve@mitre.org
EPSS 99.6% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. The dashed line is the ten per cent mark our analysts treat as “patch before the next change window”. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
CISA notes
Apply updates per vendor instructions. https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-16846
References
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-11/msg00029.htmlMailing List, Third Party Advisory
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/160039/SaltStack-Salt-REST-API-Arbitrary-Command-Execution.htmlExploit, Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://github.com/saltstack/salt/releasesRelease Notes
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/12/msg00007.htmlMailing List, Third Party Advisory
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/01/msg00000.htmlMailing List, Third Party Advisory
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TPOGB2F6XUAIGFDTOCQDNB2VIXFXHWMA/Release Notes
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202011-13Third Party Advisory
- https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4837Mailing List, Third Party Advisory
- https://www.saltstack.com/blog/on-november-3-2020-saltstack-publicly-disclosed-three-new-cves/Broken Link, Vendor Advisory
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1379/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1380/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1381/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1382/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1383/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-11/msg00029.htmlMailing List, Third Party Advisory
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/160039/SaltStack-Salt-REST-API-Arbitrary-Command-Execution.htmlExploit, Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://github.com/saltstack/salt/releasesRelease Notes
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/12/msg00007.htmlMailing List, Third Party Advisory
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/01/msg00000.htmlMailing List, Third Party Advisory
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TPOGB2F6XUAIGFDTOCQDNB2VIXFXHWMA/Release Notes
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202011-13Third Party Advisory
- https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4837Mailing List, Third Party Advisory
- https://www.saltstack.com/blog/on-november-3-2020-saltstack-publicly-disclosed-three-new-cves/Broken Link, Vendor Advisory
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1379/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1380/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1381/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1382/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1383/Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry
- https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2020-16846US Government Resource
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.