CVE-2020-2016: PAN-OS: Temporary file race condition vulnerability in PAN-OS leads to local privilege escalation

Severity: high (CVSS 7.0 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-05-13 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-377

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.

Affected products

Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS: from 7.1.0 before 7.1.26; from 8.0.0 through 8.0.20; from 8.1.0 before 8.1.13; from 9.0.0 before 9.0.6 — fixed in 7.1.26, 8.1.13, 9.0.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS 7.1.26, 8.1.13, 9.0.6. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2020-2016 or the next vulnerability affects your stack