CVE-2020-15238

HIGHNVD 7.17.1—
EchelonGraph scoreMEDIUM confidence

This high-severity CVE scores 7.1 under NVD CVSS v3. EPSS exploit probability: 4.6%, top 9% of all CVEs by exploit prediction. GitHub Security Advisory data not yet ingested — confidence will rise once GHSA publishes (typical lag: hours to days for open-source ecosystem CVEs; never for infrastructure-only CVEs).

Triggered by: NVD CVSS baseline
Sources: epss, nvd
Elevated
7.1
EchelonGraph verdictPlan a fixSerious severity, but no confirmed exploitation yet.
  • High severity, but no confirmed exploitation yet
CISA-KEV: Not listedEPSS: 5%CVSS: 7.1Exploit: NoneExposed: 0

A fix is available — apply it.

Blueman is a GTK+ Bluetooth Manager. In Blueman before 2.1.4, the DhcpClient method of the D-Bus interface to blueman-mechanism is prone to an argument injection vulnerability. The impact highly depends on the system configuration. If Polkit-1 is disabled and for versions lower than 2.0.6, any local user can possibly exploit this. If Polkit-1 is enabled for version 2.0.6 and later, a possible attacker needs to be allowed to use the org.blueman.dhcp.client action. That is limited to users in the wheel group in the shipped rules file that do have the privileges anyway. On systems with ISC DHCP client (dhclient), attackers can pass arguments to ip link with the interface name that can e.g. be used to bring down an interface or add an arbitrary XDP/BPF program. On systems with dhcpcd and without ISC DHCP client, attackers can even run arbitrary scripts by passing -c/path/to/script as an interface name. Patches are included in 2.1.4 and master that change the DhcpClient D-Bus method(s) to accept BlueZ network object paths instead of network interface names. A backport to 2.0(.8) is also available. As a workaround, make sure that Polkit-1-support is enabled and limit privileges for the org.blueman.dhcp.client action to users that are able to run arbitrary commands as root anyway in /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d/blueman.rules.

CVSS v3
7.1
EG Score
7.1(medium)
EPSS
90.7%
KEV
Not listed

Published

October 27, 2020

Last Modified

November 21, 2024

References (20)

Patch Availability(1)

Vendor / EcosystemFixed in / PatchReleasedSource
ubuntublueman (2.0.4-1ubuntu2.1) @ xenial2026-05-23ubuntu

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.

Weakness Classification(2)

MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.

All Vendor Advisories

(1)

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 11× in last 7d / 45× in last 30d)

Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. 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. Most recent first.

  1. 2026-07-22 22:35 UTCEG score recompute
  2. 2026-07-22 14:05 UTCEPSS rescore
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  18. 2026-06-24 09:50 UTCOSV refresh
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  45. 2026-06-07 14:30 UTCOSV refresh
  46. 2026-06-06 13:45 UTCEPSS rescore
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  69. 2026-05-23 06:03 UTCEG score recompute
  70. 2026-05-23 06:03 UTCVendor advisory

Publicly available exploits

(1 reference)

Working exploit code is in the public domain (1 Exploit-DB entry). Defenders should treat patch urgency accordingly — public PoCs typically lead to mass-exploitation within 24-72 hours.

  • Exploit-DBEDB-48963
    First seen Oct 28, 2020

    Blueman < 2.1.4 - Local Privilege Escalation

    Open source ↗

Frequently asked(5)

What is CVE-2020-15238?
CVE-2020-15238 is a high vulnerability published on October 27, 2020. Blueman is a GTK+ Bluetooth Manager. In Blueman before 2.1.4, the DhcpClient method of the D-Bus interface to blueman-mechanism is prone to an argument injection vulnerability. The impact highly depends on the system configuration. If Polkit-1 is disabled and for versions lower than 2.0.6, any…
When was CVE-2020-15238 disclosed?
CVE-2020-15238 was first published in the National Vulnerability Database on October 27, 2020, with the most recent update on November 21, 2024. EchelonGraph re-ingests CVE updates from NVD on a 2-hour cycle, so this page reflects the latest published state.
Is CVE-2020-15238 actively exploited?
CVE-2020-15238 is not currently on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. FIRST EPSS estimates a 90.7% percentile likelihood of exploitation in the next 30 days — higher percentiles indicate greater predicted risk.
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2020-15238?
CVE-2020-15238 has a CVSS v3 base score of 7.1 (NVD).
How do I remediate CVE-2020-15238?
Patch to the fixed version published by the affected vendor. Where vendor advisories exist for CVE-2020-15238, EchelonGraph cross-links them in the Vendor Advisories panel below — those typically contain the canonical remediation steps, fixed version numbers, and any vendor-specific mitigations.

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