CVE-2020-28243

Exp

An issue was discovered in SaltStack Salt before 3002.5. The minion's restartcheck is vulnerable to command injection via a crafted process name. This allows for a local privilege escalation by any user able to create a files on the minion in a non-blacklisted directory.

Published: 2021-02-27 Last update: 2026-06-16 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2020-28243 is rated High Exploit Risk (80.5/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 4.30%). 2 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). EPSS rose +2.89% over the last day, indicating growing attacker interest. 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.

Public exploit references (Exploit-DB) for CVE-2020-28243

EDB-ID Source Kind Published Link
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗
— nvd_ref exploit_tag Exploit-DB ↗

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2020-28243

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 2026-06-15 1.41% 4.30% +2.89%
2 2026-04-19 1.73% 1.41% -0.33%
3 2026-01-30 — 1.73% —

Full EPSS history (23 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2020-28243

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.8 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/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:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 1.8 5.9 [email protected]
4.4 2.0 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P Click to expand
Access vector (AV:L)
Requires local access to the target system.
Access complexity (AC:M)
Exploitation needs some favorable conditions, but not exceptional ones.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:P)
Partial confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:P)
Partial integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:P)
Partial availability impact.
 3.4 6.4 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2020-28243

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2020-28243

GHSA-phhw-3wc9-8q75 · Severity: high · Ecosystem: pip — SaltStack Salt command injection via a crafted process name

OS Trackers for CVE-2020-28243

vendor priority summary link
alpine — CVE-2020-28243: 1 source package rows (salt); 6 state rows across 2 repos (3.22-community, edge-community); fixed 0, open 6. https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2020-28243
gentoo high CVE-2020-28243: 2 GLSA(s) (202103-01, 202310-22), 1 atom(s) (app-admin/salt); latest impact high. https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2020-28243
redhat high — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-28243
suse high — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-28243/
ubuntu medium CVE-2020-28243 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (salt), 16 status rows across 16 suites (bionic, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 7, ignored 4, not-affected 3, released 2. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-28243

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2020-28243

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
saltstack salt < 2015.8.10 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2015.8.11, < 2015.8.13 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2016.3.0, < 2016.3.4 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2016.3.5, < 2016.3.6 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2016.3.7, < 2016.3.8 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2016.3.9, < 2016.11.3 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2016.11.4, < 2016.11.5 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2016.11.7, < 2016.11.10 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2017.5.0, < 2017.7.8 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2018.2.0, <= 2018.3.5 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2019.2.0, < 2019.2.5 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 2019.2.6, < 2019.2.8 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 3000, < 3000.6 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 3001, < 3001.4 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
saltstack salt >= 3002, < 3002.5 cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 32 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:32:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 33 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:33:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 34 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:34:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
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:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 11.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:11.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2020-28243

URL Tags
https://github.com/stealthcopter/CVE-2020-28243 Exploit Third Party Advisory
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/11/msg00009.html Mailing List Third Party Advisory
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/01/msg00000.html Mailing List Third Party Advisory
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/7GRVZ5WAEI3XFN2BDTL6DDXFS5HYSDVB/ Mailing List Third Party Advisory
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/FUGLOJ6NXLCIFRD2JTXBYQEMAEF2B6XH/ Mailing List Third Party Advisory
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/YOGNT2XWPOYV7YT75DN7PS4GIYWFKOK5/ Mailing List Third Party Advisory
https://saltproject.io/security_announcements/active-saltstack-cve-release-2021-feb-25/ Vendor Advisory
https://sec.stealthcopter.com/cve-2020-28243/ Exploit Third Party Advisory
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202103-01 Third Party Advisory
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202310-22 Third Party Advisory
https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-5011 Third Party Advisory
cvelogic Threat Intelligence