CVE-2020-6581

Exp

Nagios NRPE 3.2.1 has Insufficient Filtering because, for example, nasty_metachars interprets \n as the character \ and the character n (not as the \n newline sequence). This can cause command injection.

Published: 2020-03-16 Last update: 2026-06-16 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2020-6581 is rated High Exploit Risk (71/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 1.61%). 1 public exploit reference(s) are indexed (Exploit-DB). EPSS rose +1.38% 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-2020-6581

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

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2020-6581

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 0.23% 1.61% +1.38%
2 2025-12-26 0.27% 0.23% -0.04%
3 2025-11-21 — 0.27% —

Full EPSS history (15 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2020-6581

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.3 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/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: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: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.
 1.3 5.9 [email protected]
3.7 2.0 LOW
AV:L/AC:H/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:H)
Exploitation requires uncommon or highly specific conditions.
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.
 1.9 6.4 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2020-6581

OS Trackers for CVE-2020-6581

vendor priority summary link
alpine high CVE-2020-6581: 1 source package rows (nrpe); 6 state rows across 6 repos (3.18-main, 3.19-main, 3.20-main, 3.21-main, 3.22-main, edge-main); fixed 6, open 0. https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2020-6581
debian not yet assigned CVE-2020-6581 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (nagios-nrpe), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-6581
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-6581
suse high CVE-2020-6581 severity important: SUSE including 3 source package names (monitoring-plugins-nrpe, nagios-nrpe, nrpe), 27 product×package rows across 17 product lines (SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 12 SP4, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 12 SP5, … (17 product lines)): Known Not Affected 27. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-6581/
ubuntu low CVE-2020-6581 low priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (nagios-nrpe), 17 status rows across 17 suites (bionic, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 13, DNE 1, ignored 1, needed 1, released 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-6581

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2020-6581

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
nagios remote_plug_in_executor 3.2.1 cpe:2.3:a:nagios:remote_plug_in_executor:3.2.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 32 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:32:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2020-6581

cvelogic Threat Intelligence