CVE-2020-2016

PAN-OS: Temporary file race condition vulnerability in PAN-OS leads to local privilege escalation

At a glance

Severity
HIGH 7.0
EPSS
EPSS 0.57 % · percentile 47 (2026-10-27)
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
palo_alto
NVD status
Modified

Description

A race condition due to insecure creation of a file in a temporary directory vulnerability in PAN-OS allows for root privilege escalation from a limited linux user account. This allows an attacker who has escaped the restricted shell as a low privilege administrator, possibly by exploiting another vulnerability, to escalate privileges to become root user. This issue affects: PAN-OS 7.1 versions earlier than 7.1.26; PAN-OS 8.1 versions earlier than 8.1.13; PAN-OS 9.0 versions earlier than 9.0.6; All versions of PAN-OS 8.0.

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.0CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:Hpalo_alto
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.0CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HNVD · psirt@paloaltonetworks.com (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.0CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HNVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)
CVSS 2.0HIGH 8.5AV:N/AC:M/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:CNVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)

Weaknesses (CWE)

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
Palo Alto Networks · PAN-OSaffected 8.0.* ; affected 7.1 < 7.1.26 ; affected 8.1 < 8.1.13 ; affected 9.0 < 9.0.6 ; unaffected 9.1.0 < 9.1*

References

Sources

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