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CVE-2020-16846

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...

Basic Information

CVE State
PUBLISHED
Reserved Date
August 04, 2020
Published Date
November 06, 2020
Last Updated
July 30, 2025
Vendor
n/a
Product
n/a
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.
Tags
cisa nuclei_scanner metasploit_scanner

CVSS Scores

CVSS v3.1

9.8 - CRITICAL

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v2.0

7.5

Vector: AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

SSVC Information

Exploitation
active
Automatable
Yes
Technical Impact
total

Exploit Status

Exploited in the Wild
Yes (2025-05-05 00:00:00 UTC) Source

References

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/releases https://www.saltstack.com/blog/on-november-3-2020-saltstack-publicly-disclosed-three-new-cves/ https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TPOGB2F6XUAIGFDTOCQDNB2VIXFXHWMA/ http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-11/msg00029.html https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202011-13 http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/160039/SaltStack-Salt-REST-API-Arbitrary-Command-Execution.html https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1381/ https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1383/ https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1380/ https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1379/ https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1382/ https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/12/msg00007.html https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4837 https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/01/msg00000.html

Known Exploited Vulnerability Information

Source Added Date
CISA 2021-11-03 00:00:00 UTC

Scanner Integrations

Scanner URL Date Detected
Metasploit https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/blob/master/modules/exploits/linux/http/saltstack_salt_api_cmd_exec.rb 2025-04-29 11:01:15 UTC
Nuclei https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/blob/main/http/cves/2020/CVE-2020-16846.yaml 2025-04-26 00:00:00 UTC

Timeline

  • CVE ID Reserved

  • CVE Published to Public

  • Added to KEVIntel

  • Detected by Nuclei

  • Detected by Metasploit