Attacker Value
Very High
(1 user assessed)
Exploitability
Very High
(1 user assessed)
User Interaction
None
Privileges Required
None
Attack Vector
Network
4

CVE-2020-25592 — SaltStack Authentication Bypass and Salt SSH Command Execution

Disclosure Date: November 06, 2020 •
CVE-2020-25592 CVSS v3 Base Score: 9.8
Exploited in the Wild
Reported by gwillcox-r7
View Source Details
Add MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques that apply to this CVE.

Description

In SaltStack Salt through 3002, salt-netapi improperly validates eauth credentials and tokens. A user can bypass authentication and invoke Salt SSH.

CVSS V3 Severity and Metrics
Base Score:
9.8 Critical
Impact Score:
5.9
Exploitability Score:
3.9
Vector:
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack Vector (AV):
Network
Attack Complexity (AC):
Low
Privileges Required (PR):
None
User Interaction (UI):
None
Scope (S):
Unchanged
Confidentiality (C):
High
Integrity (I):
High
Availability (A):
High

General Information

Offensive Application
Unknown
Utility Class
Unknown
Ports
Unknown
OS
Unknown
Vulnerable Versions
n/a
Prerequisites
Unknown
Discovered By
Unknown
PoC Author
Unknown
Metasploit Module
Unknown
Reporter
Unknown

Vendors

  • debian,
  • saltstack

Products

  • debian linux 10.0,
  • debian linux 9.0,
  • salt,
  • salt 3001

Exploited in the Wild

Reported by:
Technical Analysis

Description

On Tuesday, November 3, VMware’s SaltStack released details on three new CVEs. The two more severe vulnerabilities, CVE-2020-16846 and CVE-2020-25592, affect SaltStack’s Salt API and are the focus of this analysis. CVE-2020-16846 allows an unauthenticated attacker with network access to use shell injections to run code on the Salt-API using the SSH client. CVE-2020-25592 allows an attacker to bypass authentication and make calls to Salt SSH by supplying any value for “eauth” or “token”. A successful attack using the two vulnerabilities can result in unauthenticated remote root access on a target system.

Note: This analysis is the same as the analysis posted to CVE-2020-16846.

Affected products

A patch is available for the following affected Salt versions:

  • 3002
  • 3001.1, 3001.2
  • 3000.3, 3000.4
  • 2019.2.5, 2019.2.6
  • 2018.3.5
  • 2017.7.4, 2017.7.8
  • 2016.11.3, 2016.11.6, 2016.11.10
  • 2016.3.4, 2016.3.6, 2016.3.8
  • 2015.8.10, 2015.8.13

Rapid7 analysis

None of the CVEs have a severity rating associated with them, but it hardly matters much what the eventual severity ratings turn out to be. Pre-authenticated remote root is the gold-medal standard for attackers, and it took Rapid7 researchers a mere 15 minutes and a single HTTP request to get there. CVE-2020-11651, another Salt vulnerability from April 2020, was exploited quickly by threat actors. We expect CVEs 2020-16846 and 2020-25592 to follow that same path.

Guidance

SaltStack customers should patch as quickly as possible, prioritizing these vulnerabilities above other tasks—if at all possible, please don’t wait for your typical patch cycle to apply SaltStack security updates. There are no known mitigations or workarounds as of November 9, 2020.

References