Vulnerability Monitor

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CVE-2020-11651

An issue was discovered in SaltStack Salt before 2019.2.4 and 3000 before 3000.2. The salt-master process ClearFuncs class does not properly validate method calls. This allows a remote user to access some methods without authentication. These methods can be used to retrieve user tokens from the salt master and/or run arbitrary commands on salt minions.

Security Impact Summary

This vulnerability carries a CRITICAL severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 9.8, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network with relatively low complexity without requiring user interaction and does not require pre-existing privileges . The vulnerability impacts confidentiality (data exposure), integrity (unauthorized modifications), and availability (service disruption) for affected systems. Impacting 5 products from saltstack, from opensuse, from debian and 2 others, organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.

Historical Context

Reported in 2020, this vulnerability emerged during an era marked by increased sophistication in supply chain attacks, cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security challenges. Security practices during this period emphasized zero-trust architectures, container security, and API protection.

Published

2020-04-30T17:15:12.143

Last Modified

2025-11-07T19:32:41.770

Status

Analyzed

Source

[email protected]

Severity

CVSSv3.1: 9.8 (CRITICAL)

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Access Vector: NETWORK
Access Complexity: LOW
Authentication: NONE
Confidentiality Impact: PARTIAL
Integrity Impact: PARTIAL
Availability Impact: PARTIAL

Exploitability Score

10.0

Impact Score

6.4

Weaknesses

Type: Primary
NVD-CWE-Other

Affected Vendors & Products

Type	Vendor	Product	Version/Range	Vulnerable?
Application	saltstack	salt	< 2019.2.4	Yes
Application	saltstack	salt	< 3000.2	Yes
Operating System	opensuse	leap	15.1	Yes
Operating System	debian	debian_linux	8.0	Yes
Operating System	debian	debian_linux	9.0	Yes
Operating System	debian	debian_linux	10.0	Yes
Operating System	canonical	ubuntu_linux	16.04	Yes
Operating System	canonical	ubuntu_linux	18.04	Yes
Application	vmware	application_remote_collector	7.5.0	Yes
Application	vmware	application_remote_collector	8.0.0	Yes

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00047.html Mailing List, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-07/msg00070.html Mailing List, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/157560/Saltstack-3000.1-Remote-Code-Execution.html Exploit, Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry ([email protected])
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/157678/SaltStack-Salt-Master-Minion-Unauthenticated-Remote-Code-Execution.html Exploit, Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry ([email protected])
http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2020-0009.html Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/releases/2019.2.4.html Vendor Advisory ([email protected])
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/v3000.2_docs/doc/topics/releases/3000.2.rst Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/05/msg00027.html Mailing List, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-salt-2vx545AG Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4459-1/ Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4676 Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00047.html Mailing List, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-07/msg00070.html Mailing List, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/157560/Saltstack-3000.1-Remote-Code-Execution.html Exploit, Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/157678/SaltStack-Salt-Master-Minion-Unauthenticated-Remote-Code-Execution.html Exploit, Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2020-0009.html Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/releases/2019.2.4.html Vendor Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/v3000.2_docs/doc/topics/releases/3000.2.rst Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/05/msg00027.html Mailing List, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-salt-2vx545AG Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://usn.ubuntu.com/4459-1/ Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4676 Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2020-11651 US Government Resource (134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0)

How SecUtils Interprets This CVE

SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For saltstack's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.