CVE-2020-24046
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 · uneditedA sandbox escape issue was discovered in TitanHQ SpamTitan Gateway 7.07. It limits the admin user to a restricted shell, allowing execution of a small number of tools of the operating system. This restricted shell can be bypassed after changing the properties of the user admin in the operating system file /etc/passwd. This file cannot be accessed though the restricted shell, but it can be modified by abusing the Backup/Import Backup functionality of the web interface. An authenticated attacker would be able to obtain the file /var/tmp/admin.passwd after executing a Backup operation. This file can be manually modified to change the GUID of the user to 0 (root) and change the restricted shell to a normal shell /bin/sh. After the modification is done, the file can be recompressed to a .tar.bz file and imported again via the Import Backup functionality. The properties of the admin user will be overwritten and a root shell will be granted to the user upon the next successful login.
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 analysisPrivileges are granted, or fail to be dropped, incorrectly, so an action runs with more power than it should. An attacker who reaches that path inherits the excess privilege. The fix is least-privilege throughout, with explicit, checked transitions whenever privilege changes.
General guidance for the improper privilege management class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →
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= 7.07CVSS 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
- High
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
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 dataThere is no version to upgrade to and no patch to apply. Every affected install stays exposed until the vendor ships a fix — or somebody else builds one.
Free. We build fixes in the order the community asks for them — and we’ll tell you the moment this one lands.
We develop and verify an original fix where the vendor hasn’t, from $1,950. Deployed to your staging first — never straight to production.
Scope it with usSee what else the community needs solved on the solutions-needed board.
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Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2020-24046 — 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-2020-24046 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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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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