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CVE-2020-17489

18
FAUCET Score

CVE-2020-17489 describes a low-severity information disclosure vulnerability in specific configurations of GNOME gnome-shell versions up to 3.36.4, affecting products like Canonical, Debian, GNOME, and openSUSE. When a user logs out, the password box briefly reappears, potentially revealing the cleartext password if the "show password" option was enabled during login, or otherwise exposing the password length. This vulnerability has a CVSS score of 4.3 (Medium) with a physical attack vector and low attack complexity, meaning an attacker needs physical access to the device. There is no evidence of active exploitation, no known public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), and minimal community discussion or media coverage.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
<= 3.36.4CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:gnome:gnome-shell:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
20.04CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:*:*:*:lts:*:*:*
9.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
15.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:opensuse:leap:15.2:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

4.3MEDIUM

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

Attack Vector
PHYSICAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
NONE
Availability Impact
NONE
Exploitability Score
0.7
Impact Score
3.6
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
0.55%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
42.9%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0055 is in the 93rd percentile among its peer group of 72 CVEs.

Social Chatter

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

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

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

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (1)

redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Fixed in: gnome-shell-0:3.32.2-44.el8
View patch

Vendor Advisories (1)

redhatCVE-2020-17489Low

gnome-shell: Password from logged-out user may be shown on login screen

Aug 11, 2020

References

lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-security-announce/2020-11/msg00028.html
Third Party Advisory
gitlab.gnome.org / GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/2997
ExploitPatchVendor Advisory
lists.debian.org / debian-lts-announce/2020/09/msg00014.html
Third Party Advisory
security.gentoo.org / glsa/202009-08
Third Party Advisory
usn.ubuntu.com / 4464-1
Third Party Advisory