CVE-2020-1981

PAN-OS: Predictable temporary filename vulnerability allows local privilege escalation

At a glance

Severity: HIGH 7.0
EPSS: EPSS 0.36 % · percentile 30 (2026-10-27)
State: PUBLISHED
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2024-09-17
Assigner: palo_alto
NVD status: Modified

Description

A predictable temporary filename vulnerability in PAN-OS allows local privilege escalation. This issue allows a local attacker who bypassed the restricted shell to execute commands as a low privileged user and gain root access on the PAN-OS hardware or virtual appliance. This issue affects only PAN-OS 8.1 versions earlier than PAN-OS 8.1.13. This issue does not affect PAN-OS 7.1, PAN-OS 9.0, or later PAN-OS versions.

Scores

Version	Score	Vector	Scored by
CVSS 3.1	HIGH 7.0	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H	palo_alto
CVSS 3.1	HIGH 7.0	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H	NVD · psirt@paloaltonetworks.com (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1	HIGH 7.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H	NVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)
CVSS 2.0	HIGH 7.2	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C	NVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)

Weaknesses (CWE)

European references

ENISA EUVD · EUVD-2020-12771
GCVE · GCVE-0-2020-1981

CERT-FR advisories

CERTFR-2020-AVI-142 — Multiples vulnérabilités dans Palo Alto PAN-OS · cert.ssi.gouv.fr

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

cpe:2.3:o:paloaltonetworks:pan-os:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* ≥ 8.1.0 < 8.1.13

Affected products

Product	Versions
Palo Alto Networks · PAN-OS	affected 8.1 < 8.1.13 ; affected 8.1 !>= 8.1.13 ; affected 9.0 !>= 9.0.0 ; affected 7.1 !>= 7.1.0 ; affected 9.1 !>= 9.1.0

References

https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2020-1981

Sources

Source	Licence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)	CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)	FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVD	ENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)	Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feeds	Public domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD