Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2020-17490 json

SaltStack Salt Allows creating certificates with weak file permissions

published 2020-11-06 6 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-3c56-vx6v-q5vh , PYSEC-2020-105 , EUVD-2020-0174

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 35%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The TLS module within SaltStack Salt through 3002 creates certificates with weak file permissions.

Patch / fix

  • pypi salt 2015.8.10, 2015.8.13, 2016.3.4, 2016.3.6, 2016.3.8, 2016.11.3, 2016.11.6, 2016.11.10, 2017.7.4, 2017.7.8, 2018.3.5, 2019.2.5, 2019.2.6, 3000.3, 3000.4, 3001.2, 3002.1
  • saltstack salt 2015.8.10, 2015.8.13, 2016.3.4, 2016.3.6, 2016.3.8, 2016.11.3, 2016.11.6, 2016.11.10, 2017.7.4, 2017.7.8, 2018.3.5, 2019.2.5, 3000.3
  • salt Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 2015.8.8+ds-1ubuntu0.1+esm2
  • salt Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 2017.7.4+dfsg1-1ubuntu18.04.2+esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-17490

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

  • spacewalk-java Manager Server 3.2 2.8.78.31-3.56.1
  • py26-compat-salt Manager Server 3.2 2016.11.10-6.41.1
  • spacewalk-java Manager Server Module 4.0 4.0.39-3.45.1
  • py26-compat-salt Manager Server Module 4.0 2016.11.10-10.17.1
  • salt SLES 11 SP4-CLIENT-TOOLS, SLES 11 SP3-CLIENT-TOOLS 2016.11.10-43.63.1
  • cobbler SLES 11 SP4-CLIENT-TOOLS, SLES 11 SP3-CLIENT-TOOLS 2.2.2-0.68.12.1
  • spacecmd SLES 11 SP4-CLIENT-TOOLS, SLES 11 SP3-CLIENT-TOOLS 4.1.8-18.72.1
  • mgr-daemon SLES 11 SP4-CLIENT-TOOLS, SLES 11 SP3-CLIENT-TOOLS 4.1.3-5.20.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2020:3251-1SUSE-SU-2020:3250-1SUSE-SU-2020:14538-1SUSE-SU-2020:3245-1SUSE-SU-2020:3244-1SUSE-SU-2020:3243-1

  • salt openSUSE Leap 15.1 3000-lp151.5.30.1
  • salt openSUSE Leap 15.2 3000-lp152.3.15.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2020:1868-1openSUSE-SU-2020:1833-1

  • salt Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +9 more 3002-r1

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2020-17490

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2020-17490 updated cvss 5.5

salt: creates certificates with weak file permissions

  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 salt, salt-minion
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

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

0.41% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 35% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 2.1 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
GitHub 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi salt
<2015.8.13
>=2016.3.0, <2016.3.8
>=2016.11.0, <2016.11.10
>=2017.5.0, <2017.7.8
>=2018.2.0, <2018.3.5
>=2019.2.0, <2019.2.6
>=3000, <3000.4
>=3001, <3001.2
>=3002, <3002.1
<2015.8.10
>=2015.8.11, <2015.8.13
>=2016.3.0, <2016.3.4
>=2016.3.5, <2016.3.6
>=2016.3.7, <2016.3.8
>=2016.11.0, <2016.11.3
>=2016.11.4, <2016.11.6
>=2016.11.7, <2016.11.10
>=2017.7.0, <2017.7.4
>=2017.7.5, <2017.7.8
>=2018.3.0rc1, <2018.3.5
>=2019.2.0, <2019.2.5
>=3000, <3000.3
2015.8.13
2016.3.8
2016.11.10
2017.7.8
2018.3.5
2019.2.6
3000.4
3001.2
3002.1
2015.8.10
2016.3.4
2016.3.6
2016.11.3
2016.11.6
2017.7.4
2019.2.5
3000.3

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

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.