CVE-2020-14545
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedVulnerability in the Oracle Solaris product of Oracle Systems (component: Device Driver Utility). The supported version that is affected is 11. Difficult to exploit vulnerability allows low privileged attacker with logon to the infrastructure where Oracle Solaris executes to compromise Oracle Solaris. Successful attacks require human interaction from a person other than the attacker. Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized creation, deletion or modification access to critical data or all Oracle Solaris accessible data and unauthorized ability to cause a partial denial of service (partial DOS) of Oracle Solaris. CVSS 3.1 Base Score 5.0 (Integrity and Availability impacts). CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L).
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceVulnerability in Oracle Solaris 11's Device Driver Utility allows a low-privileged local attacker with login access to modify critical system data or cause partial denial of service. Exploitation requires human interaction and has high attack complexity, impacting integrity severely while having low availability impact.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data= 11CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- High
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- Low
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Confirm Oracle Solaris versionRun 'cat /etc/release' or 'uname -a' to identify the installed Oracle Solaris versionAffected if The system is running Oracle Solaris 11 (any update revision)
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Locate Device Driver UtilitySearch for the Device Driver Utility executable (commonly 'ddutool' or similar) using 'which ddutool' or 'find /usr -name "*ddu*" -type f'Affected if The Device Driver Utility binary exists on the system
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Check Device Driver Utility permissionsRun 'ls -la <path_to_ddutool>' to examine ownership and permissions on the utility binaryAffected if The utility is owned by root and has setuid/setgid bits, or is writable by non-privileged users
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Identify users with Device Driver Utility accessRun 'getent group ddu' or check /etc/group for groups related to device driver utilities, then list users in those groups with 'getent group <group>'Affected if Low-privileged or non-administrative users are members of groups permitted to run the Device Driver Utility
A user is affected if running Oracle Solaris 11 with the Device Driver Utility accessible to low-privileged local accounts, allowing unauthorized modification of system data or partial denial of service.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataApply Oracle Critical Patch Update for CVE-2020-14545. Until patched, strictly limit system access, enforce least privilege for user accounts, and monitor for suspicious Device Driver Utility activity.
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
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Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2020-14545 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2020-14545 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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