CVE-2020-15592
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 · uneditedSteelCentral Aternity Agent before 11.0.0.120 on Windows allows Privilege Escalation via a crafted file. It uses an executable running as a high privileged Windows service to perform administrative tasks and collect data from other processes. It distributes functionality among different processes and uses IPC (Inter-Process Communication) primitives to enable the processes to cooperate. The remotely callable methods from remotable objects available through interprocess communication allow loading of arbitrary plugins (i.e., C# assemblies) from the "%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%/Aternity Information Systems/Assistant/plugins” directory, where the name of the plugin is passed as part of an XML-serialized object. However, because the name of the DLL is concatenated with the “.\plugins” string, a directory traversal vulnerability exists in the way plugins are resolved.
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 confidenceThe SteelCentral Aternity Agent Windows service loads plugin DLLs from a fixed directory but fails to sanitize the plugin name parameter before concatenation, allowing directory traversal via paths like '..\..\..\malicious.dll'. An attacker with the ability to send specially crafted XML-serialized IPC requests to the privileged service can cause it to load and execute arbitrary code, achieving privilege escalation from any user context to SYSTEM.
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< 11.0.0.120CVSS 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
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
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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Identify if SteelCentral Aternity Agent is installedOpen Windows Services console (services.msc) and look for a service named 'Aternity Agent' or 'SteelCentral Aternity Agent', or check Program Files for an 'Aternity' or 'Riverbed' folderAffected if The Aternity Agent software is present on the system
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Retrieve the installed versionRight-click the service in Services console and select Properties, or run 'wmic product where "name like '%Aternity%'" get version'Affected if The version number displayed is lower than 11.0.0.120
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Confirm the vulnerable service is runningIn Services console, verify the status of the Aternity Agent service shows as 'Running'Affected if The service is currently running and accepts IPC requests
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Check for suspicious IPC activity (optional)Monitor network connections or use process monitoring tools to observe unusual IPC requests to the Aternity Agent serviceAffected if Unexpected or malicious XML-serialized IPC requests are being sent to the service
A system is affected if SteelCentral Aternity Agent is installed with a version lower than 11.0.0.120 and the service is running, allowing the directory traversal flaw to be exploited.
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 data11.0.0.120
Upgrade to SteelCentral Aternity Agent version 11.0.0.120 or later, which contains the patch for the directory traversal vulnerability in plugin path resolution.
- Consultation4.0 h
- Implementation6.0 h
- Testing4.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
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Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2020-15592 — 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-2020-15592 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
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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