Blueman is a GTK+ Bluetooth Manager. In Blueman before 2.1.4, the DhcpClient method of the D-Bus interface to blueman-mechanism is prone to an argument injection vulnerability. The impact highly depends on the system configuration. If Polkit-1 is disabled and for versions lower than 2.0.6, any local user can possibly exploit this. If Polkit-1 is enabled for version 2.0.6 and later, a possible attacker needs to be allowed to use the `org.blueman.dhcp.client` action. That is limited to users in the wheel group in the shipped rules file that do have the privileges anyway. On systems with ISC DHCP client (dhclient), attackers can pass arguments to `ip link` with the interface name that can e.g. be used to bring down an interface or add an arbitrary XDP/BPF program. On systems with dhcpcd and without ISC DHCP client, attackers can even run arbitrary scripts by passing `-c/path/to/script` as an interface name. Patches are included in 2.1.4 and master that change the DhcpClient D-Bus method(s) to accept BlueZ network object paths instead of network interface names. A backport to 2.0(.8) is also available. As a workaround, make sure that Polkit-1-support is enabled and limit privileges for the `org.blueman.dhcp.client` action to users that are able to run arbitrary commands as root anyway in /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d/blueman.rules.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2020-15238 is rated High Exploit Risk (64.5/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.45%). Core evidence: 3 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). Mandatory action: Public exploits are available—assess exposure, apply mitigations, and prioritize patching.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
| EDB-ID | Source | Kind | Published | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 48963 | exploit_db | edb | 2020-10-28 | Exploit-DB ↗ |
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ | |
| — | nvd_ref | exploit_tag | Exploit-DB ↗ |
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2025-03-30 | 0.60% | 0.45% | -0.15% |
| 2 | 2025-03-29 | 0.45% | 0.60% | +0.15% |
| 3 | 2025-03-19 | — | 0.45% | — |
Full EPSS history (9 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.1 | 3.1 | HIGH |
|
1.8 | 4.7 | [email protected] |
| 7.0 | 3.1 | HIGH |
|
1.0 | 5.9 | [email protected] |
| 6.9 | 2.0 | MEDIUM |
|
3.4 | 10.0 | [email protected] |
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
not yet assigned | CVE-2020-15238 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (blueman), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-15238 |
gentoo
|
high | CVE-2020-15238: 1 GLSA(s) (202011-11), 1 atom(s) (net-wireless/blueman); latest impact high. | https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2020-15238 |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2020-15238 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (blueman), 6 status rows across 6 suites (bionic, focal, groovy, trusty, upstream, xenial): released 5, DNE 1. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-15238 |
| Vendor | Product | Version | Raw CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
| blueman_project | blueman | < 2.1.4 | cpe:2.3:a:blueman_project:blueman:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 9.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| debian | debian_linux | 10.0 | cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| fedoraproject | fedora | 31 | cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:31:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| fedoraproject | fedora | 32 | cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:32:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| fedoraproject | fedora | 33 | cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:33:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |