Local privilege escalation in exim package from user mail to root

published 2020-04-02 6 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2020-28928

cvss: 8.4; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.5%; EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 44%
public exploits: 0; none known

A UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following vulnerability in the packaging of exim in openSUSE Factory allows local attackers to escalate from user mail to root. This issue affects: openSUSE Factory exim versions prior to 4.93.0.4-3.1.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1 distros 1

openSUSE Factory 4.93.0.4-3.1

exim openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.94.2-4.2
exim Package Hub 15 SP1 4.94.2-bp151.2.4.1
libspf2 Package Hub 15 SP1 1.2.10-bp151.4.1
exim openSUSE Leap 15.1 4.88-lp151.4.12.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10746-1 openSUSE-SU-2021:0753-1 openSUSE-SU-2020:0491-1

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-2020-8015 updated 2026-11-07 cvss 7.8

exim: Symlink Following could result in privilege escalation

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 exim
affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”

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

0.53% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 44% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

bugzilla.suse.com https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1154183 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	8.4	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/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	7.2	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Affected products

openSUSE Factory

Classification

Weakness

CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

References

bugzilla.suse.com /show_bug.cgi?id=1154183
exploit, issue-tracking, vendor-advisory
lists.opensuse.org /opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00010.html
vendor-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2020-8015
NVD CVE-2020-8015

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