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CVE-2020-16846: SaltStack Salt Shell Injection Vulnerability
CVE-2020-16846 is rated critical with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 and affects SaltStack Salt, along with 3 other products in NVD’s configuration data. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication, without any user interaction. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available. CISA added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03, which means exploitation in the wild has been observed.
Vulnerability description
An issue was discovered in SaltStack Salt through 3002. Sending crafted web requests to the Salt API, with the SSH client enabled, can result in shell injection.
Severity breakdown
CVSS v3.1 9.8: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Attack vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network, with no need for local or physical access.
- Attack complexity: Low. No special conditions; the attack can be repeated reliably.
- Privileges required: None. No account or prior access is needed.
- User interaction: None. No action from any user is needed.
- Scope: Unchanged. Impact stays within the vulnerable component.
- Confidentiality impact: High. Total loss of confidentiality; sensitive data can be fully disclosed.
- Integrity impact: High. Total loss of integrity; data or system state can be fully modified.
- Availability impact: High. Total loss of availability; the component can be shut down.
Underlying weakness
CWE-78: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command
The product constructs all or part of an OS command using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the intended OS command before it is sent to a downstream component.
Affected products
- Saltstack: before 2015.8.10; from 2015.8.11 before 2015.8.13; from 2016.3.0 before 2016.3.4; from 2016.3.5 before 2016.3.6; from 2016.3.7 before 2016.3.8; from 2016.11.0 before 2016.11.3; from 2016.11.4 before 2016.11.6; from 2016.11.7 before 2016.11.10; from 2017.5.0 before 2017.7.4; from 2017.7.5 before 2017.7.8; from 2018.2.0 before 2018.3.5; from 2019.2.0 before 2019.2.5
- Debian Linux: 9.0; 10.0
- Fedoraproject: 31
- Opensuse Leap: 15.1
References
- https://www.saltstack.com/blog/on-november-3-2020-saltstack-publicly-disclosed-three-new-cves/
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-11/msg00029.html
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/160039/SaltStack-Salt-REST-API-Arbitrary-Command-Execution.html
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/12/msg00007.html
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/01/msg00000.html
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202011-13
- https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4837
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1379/
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1380/
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1381/
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1382/
- https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-20-1383/
- https://github.com/saltstack/salt/releases
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TPOGB2F6XUAIGFDTOCQDNB2VIXFXHWMA/