CVE-2020-11651
Actively exploited. CVE-2020-11651 is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) — exploitation has been observed in the wild, and US federal agencies are required to remediate it under BOD 22-01. Treat patching as urgent.
Public exploit code is available. Proof-of-concept or working exploit code for CVE-2020-11651 is indexed in Metasploit, Exploit-DB and GitHub PoC. Expect opportunistic scanning and exploitation attempts — prioritize remediation.
SaltStack Salt contains an authentication bypass vulnerability in the salt-master process ClearFuncs due to improperly validating method calls. The vulnerability allows a remote user to access some methods without authentication, which can be used to retrieve user tokens from the salt master and/or run commands on salt minions. Salt users who follow fundamental internet security guidelines and best practices are not affected by this vulnerability.
CSIRTS triage
- What
- SaltStack Salt contains an authentication bypass vulnerability allowing remote users to access methods without authentication.
- Who is affected
- Users of SaltStack Salt who do not follow security best practices.
- Urgency
- Remediation is urgent due to active exploitation and critical severity.
- Action
- Update to the latest version of SaltStack Salt.
AI-assisted analysis generated from the source advisory — verify against the original.
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Exploitation outlook
- Exploitation confirmedAlready exploited in the wild (CISA KEV) — the prediction phase is over. Patch now. Riskier than 100% of all EPSS-scored CVEs.
Exploit availability
Public exploit or proof-of-concept code for CVE-2020-11651 is indexed in these free datasets. Available exploit code raises real-world risk independent of the CVSS score.
- MetasploitA Metasploit Framework module targets this CVE — weaponized, point-and-click exploitation.look it up ↗
- Exploit-DBA public exploit is published in the Exploit-DB archive.look it up ↗
- GitHub PoCPublic proof-of-concept repositories on GitHub reference this CVE.look it up ↗
Advisory coverage (1)
- criticalexploitedCVE-2020-11651: SaltStack Salt Authentication Bypass Vulnerabilitycisa-kev · 2021-11-03
External references
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[](https://www.csirts.com/cve/CVE-2020-11651)