Critical severity · published Nov 6, 2020
CVE-2020-16846
SaltStack Salt Shell Injection Vulnerability
In wildKEV
9.8
CVSS
99.6%
EPSS
Yes
On KEV
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 vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)99.6% · higher than 100% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildYes
CISA KEVListed Nov 3, 2021
Federal remediation dueMay 3, 2022
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
DL
Debian Linux · Debian
9.0; 10.0 · source: NVD
FE
Fedora · Fedoraproject
31 · source: NVD
LE
Leap · Opensuse
15.1 · source: NVD
SA
Salt · Saltstack
before 2015.8.10; 2015.8.11 before 2015.8.13; 2016.3.0 before 2016.3.4; 2016.3.5 before 2016.3.6; 2016.3.7 before 2016.3.8; 2016.11.0 before 2016.11.3; +9 more · source: NVD, KEV
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-16846
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-16846
CISA KEV catalogue
https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog
x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/releases
x_refsource_CONFIRM
https://www.saltstack.com/blog/on-november-3-2020-saltstack-publicly-disclosed-three-new-cves/
vendor-advisory
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TPOGB2F6XUAIGFDTOCQDNB2VIXFXHWMA/
vendor-advisory
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-11/msg00029.html
vendor-advisory
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202011-13
x_refsource_MISC
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/160039/SaltStack-Salt-REST-API-Arbitrary-Command-Execution.html
More from Debian Linux
10.0
CVE-2025-32433
Erlang/OTP SSH Vulnerable to Pre-Authentication RCE
10.0
CVE-2025-24201
Apple Multiple Products WebKit Out-of-Bounds Write Vulnerability
10.0
CVE-2021-44228
Apache Log4j2 JNDI features do not protect against attacker controlled LDAP and other JNDI related endpoints
10.0
CVE-2015-3306
ProFTPD Improper Access Control Vulnerability
9.8
CVE-2026-24061
GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Vulnerability