critical Known exploitedREV. 01

CVE-2020-16846SaltStack Salt — Shell Injection Through the Programming Interface

Crafted requests to the Salt interface reach a shell when the remote client is enabled, giving an attacker the master that controls every managed machine.

YOUR NEXT MOVE

Upgrade Salt past 3002, and keep the interface off networks you do not control.

Read the risk

THE VITAL STATS
CVSS score
9.8/ 10
CVSS v3.1
EPSS probability
100%
Likelihood of exploitation
Attack complexity
Low
Conditions needed to exploit
Known exploited
Yes — CISA KEV
CVE published
2020-11-06
Added to KEV
2021-11-03
Exploit published
Yes
Confidence
high
Kill chain
initial access
MITRE ATT&CK
T1190, T1059
Severity
critical

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attacker needsNetwork access to the Salt interface

Behind the card

5 REFERENCES
Field-level provenanceTRACE THE SOURCES +

Which source supports each field, when it was retrieved, and who extracted it.

FieldsSourceRetrievedExtractorConfidence
cvss, exploitation.attack_complexity, exploitation.exploit_available, references, published_atnvd.nist.gov2026-08-07scrty-crds-pipeline/0.1high
exploitation.known_exploited, exploitation.kev_addedcisa.gov2026-08-07scrty-crds-pipeline/0.1high
epssapi.first.org2026-08-07scrty-crds-pipeline/0.1high
title, summary, severity, remediation, mitre_attack, kill_chain, recommended_action, confidence, tags, exploitation.prerequisitesnvd.nist.gov2026-08-07claude-codehigh

Printing history

THE RECORD
  1. r1Initial base card

First printing. This card has not been reprinted since publication.

crds:cve-2020-16846 · CRDS 0.1 · Issued 2026-08-07