An insecure modification vulnerability in the /etc/passwd file was found in all versions of OpenShift ServiceMesh (maistra) before 1.0.8 in…

published 2020-02-17 6 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-12559

cvss: 7.0; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.3%; EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 20%
public exploits: 0; none known

An insecure modification vulnerability in the /etc/passwd file was found in all versions of OpenShift ServiceMesh (maistra) before 1.0.8 in the openshift/istio-kialia-rhel7-operator-container. An attacker with access to the container could use this flaw to modify /etc/passwd and escalate their privileges.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

redhat openshift_service_mesh 1.0.8

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-2020-1704 updated 2025-11-21 cvss 7.0

openshift-service-mesh/kiali-rhel7-operator: /etc/passwd is given incorrect privileges

Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh 1.1 openshift-service-mesh/kiali-rhel7-operator 1.12.12-2
fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2020:2369

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

0.27% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 20% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	7.0	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	3.1	7.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	4.6	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Affected products

Red Hat openshift-service-mesh/kiali-rhel7-operator

Classification

Weakness

CWE-266 Incorrect Privilege Assignment
CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

References

bugzilla.redhat.com /show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2020-1704
issue-tracking, vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2020-1704
NVD CVE-2020-1704

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.

Summary