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Fencer Vulns
low 3.4

CVE-2020-15186 json

Improper sanitization of plugin names in Helm

published 2020-09-17 6 y ago modified 2026-09-08 2 mo ago also BIT-helm-2020-15186 , EUVD-2021-1132 , GHSA-m54r-vrmv-hw33

cvss
3.4
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.0%
EPSS 1.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 61%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In Helm before versions 2.16.11 and 3.3.2 plugin names are not sanitized properly. As a result, a malicious plugin author could use characters in a plugin name that would result in unexpected behavior, such as duplicating the name of another plugin or spoofing the output to `helm --help`. This issue has been patched in Helm 3.3.2. A possible workaround is to not install untrusted Helm plugins. Examine the `name` field in the `plugin.yaml` file for a plugin, looking for characters outside of the [a-zA-Z0-9._-] range.

Patch / fix

  • go helm.sh/helm/v3 3.3.2
  • go helm.sh/helm 2.16.11
  • bitnami helm 2.16.11, 3.3.2
  • helm helm 2.16.11, 3.3.2
  • kubernetes SLE Module for Containers 15 SP1 1.17.13-4.21.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2020:3760-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2020-15186 updated cvss 2.7

helm: plugin names are not sanitized properly

  • Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes 2 helm
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16.2 osp-director-provisioner-container, rhosp-rhel8-tech-preview/osp-director-operator, rhosp-rhel8-tech-preview/osp-director-downloader
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.96% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 61% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 3.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N
GitHub 3.1 3.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N
NVD 3.1 2.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
NVD 2.0 4.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:P/A:N
OSV 3.1 2.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go helm.sh/helm/v3
>=3.0.0, <3.3.2
3.3.2
go helm.sh/helm
<2.16.11
2.16.11
bitnami helm
>=2.0.0, <2.16.11
>=3.0.0, <3.3.2
2.16.11
3.3.2

Affected products

  • helm helm

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-74 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.