What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2010-20103: ProFTPD 1.3.3c Backdoor Command Execution

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 13.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2025-08-20 · updated 2026-07-15
• Weakness: CWE-912

Description

A malicious backdoor was embedded in the official ProFTPD 1.3.3c source tarball distributed between November 28 and December 2, 2010. The backdoor implements a hidden FTP command trigger that, when invoked, causes the server to execute arbitrary shell commands with root privileges. This allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to run any OS command on the FTP server host.

Affected products

• ProFTPD: 1.3.3-c

References

• http://www.proftpd.org/
• https://advisories.checkpoint.com/defense/advisories/public/2011/cpai-2010-151.html/
• https://github.com/proftpd/proftpd
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/master/modules/exploits/unix/ftp/proftpd_133c_backdoor.rb
• https://web.archive.org/web/20111107212129/http://rsync.proftpd.org/
• https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/15662
• https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/16921
• https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/proftpd-backdoor-command-execution
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/master/modules/exploits/unix/ftp/proftpd_133c_backdoor.rb
• https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/15662
• https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/16921

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