Predictive Vulnerability Intelligence.

Product

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Documentation

Company

  • About
  • Partnerships
  • Blog
  • Support

Legal

  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Data Licensing

© 2026 FAUCET Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

CVE-2020-11651

98
FAUCET Score

CVE-2020-11651 is a critical vulnerability in SaltStack Salt before versions 2019.2.4 and 3000.2, affecting products from Canonical, Debian, OpenSUSE, SaltStack, and VMware. This flaw allows unauthenticated remote attackers to bypass authentication in the salt-master process, enabling them to retrieve user tokens or execute arbitrary commands on Salt minions. With a CVSS score of 9.8 (Critical) and an EPSS score indicating high exploitability, this vulnerability poses a significant risk due to its network-based attack vector, low attack complexity, and complete compromise potential (confidentiality, integrity, availability). It is actively exploited in the wild, with public exploit code available in Metasploit and ExploitDB, and has garnered extensive community discussion and media coverage, including reports of its use in high-profile breaches.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
< 2019.2.4CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 3000, < 3000.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:saltstack:salt:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
15.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:opensuse:leap:15.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
8.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:8.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
9.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

9.8CRITICAL

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
3.9
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
96.41%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
99.9%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
Added to KEV · Nov 3, 2021
Metasploit: SaltStack Salt Master/Minion Unauthenticated RCE · Apr 30, 2020
ExploitDB: EDB-48421 · May 5, 2020
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.9640 is in the 99th percentile among its peer group of 36,897 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.3 Bluesky, 0.3 Mastodon, and 2.4 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (3)

pippatch availablevia ghsa
Product: saltFixed in: 2019.2.4
pippatch availablevia ghsa
Product: saltFixed in: 3000.2
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Ceph Storage 2Fixed in: salt

Vendor Advisories (2)

pipGHSA-pjhf-vpx3-33r3critical

SaltStack Salt Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution

May 24, 2022
redhatCVE-2020-11651Important

salt: salt-master process ClearFuncs class does not properly validate method calls

Apr 29, 2020

References

cisa.gov / known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog
US Government Resource
lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00047.html
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-security-announce/2020-07/msg00070.html
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
packetstormsecurity.com / files/157560/Saltstack-3000.1-Remote-Code-Execution.html
ExploitThird Party AdvisoryVDB Entry
packetstormsecurity.com / files/157678/SaltStack-Salt-Master-Minion-Unauthenticated-Remote-Code-Execution.html
ExploitThird Party AdvisoryVDB Entry
docs.saltstack.com / en/latest/topics/releases/2019.2.4.html
Vendor Advisory
github.com / saltstack/salt/blob/v3000.2_docs/doc/topics/releases/3000.2.rst
Third Party Advisory
lists.debian.org / debian-lts-announce/2020/05/msg00027.html
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
tools.cisco.com / security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-salt-2vx545AG
Third Party Advisory
usn.ubuntu.com / 4459-1
Third Party Advisory
debian.org / security/2020/dsa-4676
Third Party Advisory
vmware.com / security/advisories/VMSA-2020-0009.html
Third Party Advisory