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.
CVE-2020-11651
“—” beside the score: it is equal to NVD's CVSS score.
Score elevated to 9.8 because this CVE is listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03), indicating real-world exploitation has been confirmed by US federal agencies. NVD baseline CVSS 9.8 retained for reference. Confidence: HIGH.
Also known asEUVD-2020-0171 (ENISA EUVD) · GHSA-pjhf-vpx3-33r3 (GitHub Security Advisories)Source: ENISA EUVD
- Actively exploited in the wild (CISA-KEV) — the reason this is sooner than the SSVC decision on this page at low mission impact
A fix is available — apply it.
- CVSS v3
- 9.8
- EG Score
- 9.8CRITICALhigh confidence
- EG Risk
- 99EG Risk 99/100
EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score. It fuses impact severity (EG Severity, the CVSS base score, never the KEV-floored or EPSS-lifted EG Score) with real-world exploitation and automatability, under weights EchelonGraph set by hand, so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner.
How it’s computed (value × EchelonGraph’s weight)Severity98% × 45%Impact severity (EG Severity): CVSS 9.8 of 10. Never the KEV-floored or EPSS-lifted EG Score.Exploitation100% × 40%Fixed at 100% for a CISA KEV listing: EchelonGraph's rule.Automatability100% × 15%CISA's SSVC Automatable value: yes (Vulnrichment).SSVC (CISA's decision table, applied by EchelonGraph): Attend at low mission impact; Act at medium or high.Exploitation active (CISA Vulnrichment) · Automatable yes (CISA Vulnrichment) · Technical impact total (CISA Vulnrichment). All three are CISA's SSVC values (Vulnrichment). EchelonGraph applied CISA's decision table to them; CISA publishes SSVC inputs and the table, not a decision for each CVE.Action: A fix is available. Apply it sooner than your standard update timelines at low mission impact and as soon as possible at medium or high. - EPSS PROB
- 97%
- EPSS %ILE
- 99th
- KEV
- ⚠ Exploited
What the EG score is made of (scorer v4.0: the three questions the 0–10 score mixes, published apart · methodology)
The EG score (9.8): severity, escalated by confirmed exploitation. This CVE's 9.8 is its impact severity (EG Severity), not escalated.
- EG Severity
- 9.8 CRITICALCVSS-B, impact only: no KEV listing, EPSS or EG-KEV tier raises it.GitHub Security Advisory CVSS
- EG Likelihood
- 97% within 30 daysSource: FIRST EPSS (model v2026.06.15, score date 2026-11-01). FIRST's exploitation probability, not an EchelonGraph model.
- Confirmed exploitation
- CISA KEV and EG-KEV Tier 1 (exploited in the wild)Reported apart from the likelihood: an observed fact, not a probability.
- EG Priority
- SSVC Act at medium mission impactAttend at low mission impact; Act at medium or high.CISA BOD 26-04: 3 days & forensic triage if the affected system is publicly exposed; 3 days & forensic triage if it is not.Each input and its source, and whom BOD 26-04 binds: the SSVC and BOD 26-04 blocks below.
SSVC (CISA's decision table, applied by EchelonGraph)Attend at low mission impact; Act at medium or high.
A fix is available. Apply it sooner than your standard update timelines at low mission impact and as soon as possible at medium or high.
Exploitation active (CISA Vulnrichment) · Automatable yes (CISA Vulnrichment) · Technical impact total (CISA Vulnrichment). All three are CISA's SSVC values (Vulnrichment). EchelonGraph applied CISA's decision table to them; CISA publishes SSVC inputs and the table, not a decision for each CVE. Mission impact is CISA's Mission & Well-being decision point, and only you can judge it. CISA's table makes it high when Mission Prevalence is Essential — the vulnerable component "directly provides capabilities that constitute at least one MEF for at least one entity" (MEF: mission essential function) — or when Public Well-Being Impact is Irreversible: "multiple fatalities are likely", the cyber-physical system "is likely lost or destroyed", "extreme or serious externalities" are imposed on other parties, or social systems such as elections or the financial grid "are destabilized and potentially collapse". CISA's decision table
BOD 26-04 (CISA's remediation timeline, Table 1)3 days & forensic triage if the affected system is publicly exposed; 3 days & forensic triage if it is not.
The score's inputs: In CISA KEV yes (CISA's KEV catalog) · Automatable yes (CISA Vulnrichment) · Technical impact total (CISA Vulnrichment). Whether your system is publicly exposed is yours to answer. BOD 26-04 binds US Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies; for anyone else it is CISA's published timeline, a reference rather than an obligation. The directive · how EchelonGraph applies it
CISA required action“Apply updates per vendor instructions.”
Quoted verbatim from CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. CISA directs it at US federal civilian executive branch agencies under Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 26-04, which replaced BOD 22-01 on 10 June 2026; it is not EchelonGraph's advice. CISA's notes: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-11651
Published
April 30, 2020
Last Modified
November 7, 2025
Advisory Details (6)
Auto-updated Oct 30, 2026SaltStack FrameWork Vulnerabilities Affecting Cisco Products
https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-salt-2vx545AG[SECURITY] [DLA 2223-1] salt security update
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/05/msg00027.htmlsalt/doc/topics/releases/3000.2.rst at v3000.2_docs · saltstack/salt · GitHub
https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/v3000.2_docs/doc/topics/releases/3000.2.rstSupport Content Notification - Support Portal - Broadcom support portal
http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2020-0009.htmlPatch Availability(4)
| Vendor / Ecosystem | Fix (by version range) / Patch | Released | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ubuntu | salt-syndic (0.17.5+ds-1ubuntu0.1~esm2) @ trusty | 2026-11-02 | ubuntu |
| ubuntu | salt-syndic (2015.8.8+ds-1ubuntu0.1) @ xenial | 2026-11-02 | ubuntu |
| pip | salt @ 2019.2.4 (fixes < 2019.2.4) | — | ghsa |
| pip | salt @ 3000.2 (fixes >= 3000, < 3000.2) | — | ghsa |
Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.
Affected Packages
(4 across 4 ecosystems)
Debian:10(1)
| Package | Vulnerable range | Fix by version range | Dependents |
|---|---|---|---|
| salt | 2018.3.4+dfsg1-6 |
| — |
Debian:8(1)
| Package | Vulnerable range | Fix by version range | Dependents |
|---|---|---|---|
| salt | 2014.1.13+ds-3 |
| — |
Debian:9(1)
| Package | Vulnerable range | Fix by version range | Dependents |
|---|---|---|---|
| salt | 2016.11.2+ds-1, 2016.11.2+ds-1+deb9u1, 2016.11.2+ds-1+deb9u2, 2016.11.2+ds-1+deb9u3 |
| — |
PyPI(1)
| Package | Vulnerable range | Fix by version range | Dependents |
|---|---|---|---|
| salt | 0.10.0 ... 3000.1 (160 versions) |
| — |
Weakness Classification(2)
MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.
All Vendor Advisories
(2)
Every vendor that published an advisory referencing this CVE — pulled from our cve_vendor_advisories aggregation. Click any row for the vendor's original advisory page.
Data Freshness Timeline
(refreshed 16× in last 7d / 94× in last 30d)
Each row is a time one of our pipelines fetched, updated or re-scored this CVE. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. An arrow marks a change the record states ("CVSS v3 → 9.1"); EPSS and GHSA rows show the values recorded at that time, not what changed (EPSS values are rounded; hover one for the exact figures). Most recent first.
Showing the most recent 100 of 805 refreshes on record for this CVE.
A repeat, a row identical to one the same pipeline wrote less than 10 seconds earlier, is not a separate refresh and is not counted. None are among the latest 100 rows. The 705 oldest rows on record are not shown and were not checked, so the counts can still include repeats.
- 2026-11-02 04:13 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-11-02 04:13 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-11-02 04:13 UTCGHSA enrichmentGHSA-pjhf-vpx3-33r3 · GitHub severity CRITICAL · GitHub CVSS 9.8
- 2026-11-01 08:38 UTCGHSA enrichmentGHSA-pjhf-vpx3-33r3 · GitHub severity CRITICAL · GitHub CVSS 9.8
- 2026-11-01 08:38 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-11-01 02:51 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-11-01 02:51 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-31 01:32 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-31 01:32 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-30 00:14 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-28 22:56 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-28 22:56 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-27 21:38 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-27 21:38 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-26 20:20 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-26 20:20 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-25 19:01 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-25 18:52 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-25 16:28 UTCEPSS rescoreEPSS 97% · 99th percentile
- 2026-10-24 17:43 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-24 17:43 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-23 16:27 UTCEPSS rescoreEPSS 97% · 99th percentile
- 2026-10-23 16:25 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-22 21:46 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-22 21:46 UTCVendor advisory
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- 2026-10-21 20:26 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-21 20:26 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-20 19:08 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-20 19:08 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-19 17:48 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-18 16:28 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-18 16:21 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-18 09:36 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-17 16:28 UTCEPSS rescoreEPSS 97% · 99th percentile
- 2026-10-17 15:02 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-17 15:02 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-16 13:43 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-15 16:27 UTCEPSS rescoreEPSS 97% · 99th percentile
- 2026-10-15 12:23 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-14 16:28 UTCEPSS rescoreEPSS 97% · 99th percentile
- 2026-10-14 11:04 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-14 11:04 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-13 09:45 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-12 19:48 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-12 08:26 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-12 00:40 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-11 20:49 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-11 20:49 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-11 16:56 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-11 13:04 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-11 13:04 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-11 09:11 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-11 05:19 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-11 01:28 UTCVendor advisory
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- 2026-10-10 10:01 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-10 06:09 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-10 02:18 UTCVendor advisory
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- 2026-10-08 15:32 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-08 11:41 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-08 03:58 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-08 00:06 UTCEG score recompute
- 2026-10-08 00:06 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-07 23:43 UTCEPSS rescoreEPSS 97% · 99th percentile
- 2026-10-07 20:15 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-07 08:40 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-07 04:49 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-07 00:58 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-06 21:06 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-06 17:15 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-06 13:24 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-06 05:38 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-06 01:47 UTCVendor advisory
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- 2026-10-05 06:30 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-05 02:39 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-04 22:48 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-04 18:57 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-04 11:11 UTCVendor advisory
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- 2026-10-04 03:29 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-03 19:45 UTCVendor advisory
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- 2026-10-03 12:03 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-03 08:11 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-03 04:17 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-03 00:26 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-02 20:35 UTCVendor advisory
- 2026-10-02 12:45 UTCVendor advisory
Publicly available exploits
(13 references, 10 shown)Public exploit code is referenced for this CVE (2 Metasploit modules, 1 Exploit-DB entry, 9 GitHub PoCs), as is 1 GitHub checker repository. A GitHub repository named or described as a checker or scanner checks whether a system is affected; it is not necessarily exploit code. Defenders should treat patch urgency accordingly.
- Metasploitauxiliary/gather/saltstack_salt_root_key✓ verifiedPublished May 12, 2020
SaltStack Salt Master Server Root Key Disclosure
Open source ↗ - Metasploitexploit/linux/misc/saltstack_salt_unauth_rce✓ verifiedPublished May 12, 2020
SaltStack Salt Master/Minion Unauthenticated RCE
Open source ↗ - GitHub PoCappcheck-ng/salt-rce-scanner-CVE-2020-11651-CVE-2020-11652Published Nov 30, 2020
Scanning tool to test for SaltStack vulnerabilities CVE-2020-11651 & CVE-2020-11652.
Open source ↗ - Open source ↗GitHub PoClovelyjuice/cve-2020-11651-exp-plusPublished May 7, 2020
- GitHub PoCssrsec/CVE-2020-11651-CVE-2020-11652-EXPPublished May 7, 2020
CVE-2020-11651&&CVE-2020-11652 EXP
Open source ↗ - Exploit-DBEDB-48421Published May 5, 2020
Saltstack 3000.1 - Remote Code Execution
Open source ↗ - GitHub PoC0xc0d/CVE-2020-11651Published May 4, 2020
CVE-2020-11651: Proof of Concept
Open source ↗ - GitHub PoCbravery9/SaltStack-ExpPublished May 4, 2020
CVE-2020-11651&&CVE-2020-11652 EXP
Open source ↗ - Open source ↗GitHub PoCdozernz/cve-2020-11651Published May 4, 2020
- GitHub PoCjasperla/CVE-2020-11651-pocPublished May 4, 2020
PoC exploit of CVE-2020-11651 and CVE-2020-11652
Open source ↗
Related CVEs(same product + same vendor + same CWE)
Same product
10 shownDebian:8:salt · Debian:10:salt · Debian:9:salt
- CVE-2020-11652NVD 6.5EG 9.0 KEVEPSS p100CRITICAL
- CVE-2020-25592EG 9.8EPSS p99CRITICAL
- CVE-2020-16846EG 9.8 KEVEPSS p100CRITICAL
- CVE-2019-17361EG 9.8EPSS p97CRITICAL
- CVE-2021-21996EG 7.5HIGH
- CVE-2020-17490EG 5.5MEDIUM
- CVE-2021-3197EG 9.8EPSS p99CRITICAL
- CVE-2021-3148EG 9.8EPSS p95CRITICAL
- CVE-2021-25283EG 9.8EPSS p96CRITICAL
- CVE-2021-25281EG 9.8EPSS p99CRITICAL
Same vendor
4 shownubuntu:USN-4459-1
Same CWE
10 shownCWE-20 · CWE-306
- CVE-2020-11652NVD 6.5EG 9.0 KEVEPSS p100CRITICAL
- CVE-2020-11028EG 5.8MEDIUM
- CVE-2019-5620EG 9.8EPSS p99CRITICAL
- CVE-2020-12478EG 7.5EPSS p95HIGH
- CVE-2020-12117EG 5.3MEDIUM
- CVE-2020-12474EG 6.5MEDIUM
- CVE-2020-11674EG 8.8HIGH
- CVE-2020-10663EG 7.5EPSS p94HIGH
- CVE-2020-10641EG 7.5HIGH
- CVE-2020-12279EG 9.8EPSS p93CRITICAL
Frequently asked(6)
What is CVE-2020-11651?
When was the CVE record for CVE-2020-11651 published?
Is CVE-2020-11651 actively exploited?
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2020-11651?
Which products are affected by CVE-2020-11651?
How do I remediate CVE-2020-11651?
Dependency Blast Radius
See which npm, PyPI, Go, and Maven packages are affected by CVE-2020-11651
Is Your Infrastructure Affected by CVE-2020-11651?
EchelonGraph automatically scans your cloud infrastructure and maps CVE exposure using blast radius analysis.