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Fencer Vulns
high 7.1

CVE-2020-15238 json

Local privilege escalation Blueman

published 2020-10-27 6 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-7263

cvss
7.1
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
4.6%
EPSS 4.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 91%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • blueman_project blueman 2.1.4
  • blueman Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.1.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-15238

  • blueman Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 2.0.4-1ubuntu2.1
  • blueman Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.0.5-1ubuntu1.1
  • blueman Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 2.1.2-1ubuntu0.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-15238

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • blueman Package Hub 15 SP2 2.1.4-bp152.2.6.1
  • blueman Package Hub 15 SP2, openSUSE Leap 15.2 2.1.4-bp152.2.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2020:2024-1openSUSE-SU-2020:1997-1

  • blueman Arch Linux 2.1.4-1

arch linux advisories AVG-1259

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-2020-15238 updated cvss 7.1

blueman: local privilege escalation in org.blueman.Mechanism D-Bus interface

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    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

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. First public exploit (EDB-48963)

Exploit prediction

4.59% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 91% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-48963 Blueman < 2.1.4 - Local Privilege Escalation local, 2020-10-28
  • bugs.launchpad.net https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/blueman/+bug/1897287 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • packetstormsecurity.com http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/159740/Blueman-Local-Root-Privilege-Escalation.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:L
NVD 3.1 7.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

  • blueman-project blueman

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-74 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component
  • CWE-88 Improper Neutralization of Argument Delimiters in a Command

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.