CVE-2020-22916

An issue discovered in XZ 5.2.5 allows attackers to cause a denial of service via decompression of a crafted file. NOTE: the vendor disputes the claims of "endless output" and "denial of service" because decompression of the 17,486 bytes always results in 114,881,179 bytes, which is often a reasonable size increase.

Published: 2023-08-22 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2020-22916 is rated Low Risk (23.8/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.02%). Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2020-22916

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 2025-11-21 0.08% 0.02% -0.06%
2 2025-11-18 0.02% 0.08% +0.06%
3 2025-03-17 — 0.02% —

Full EPSS history (5 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2020-22916

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 1.8 3.6 [email protected]
5.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 1.8 3.6 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2020-22916

OS Trackers for CVE-2020-22916

vendor priority summary link
suse low CVE-2020-22916 severity low: SUSE including 7 source package names (liblzma5, liblzma5-32bit, …), 230 product×package rows across 50 product lines (SUSE CaaS Platform 4.0, SUSE Enterprise Storage 7, … (50 product lines)): Known Not Affected 230. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-22916/
ubuntu medium CVE-2020-22916 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (xz-utils), 9 status rows across 9 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, lunar, mantic, noble, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 6, ignored 2, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-22916

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2020-22916

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
tukaani xz 5.2.5 cpe:2.3:a:tukaani:xz:5.2.5:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2020-22916

cvelogic Threat Intelligence