CVE-2020-2041: PAN-OS: Management web interface denial-of-service (DoS)

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-09-09 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-16

Description

An insecure configuration of the appweb daemon of Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS 8.1 allows a remote unauthenticated user to send a specifically crafted request to the device that causes the appweb service to crash. Repeated attempts to send this request result in denial of service to all PAN-OS services by restarting the device and putting it into maintenance mode. This issue impacts all versions of PAN-OS 8.0, and PAN-OS 8.1 versions earlier than 8.1.16.

Affected products

Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS: from 8.0.0 through 8.0.20; from 8.1.0 before 8.1.16 — fixed in 8.1.16
Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS: from 8.1 before 8.1.16; 8.0.* — fixed in 8.1.16

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS 8.1.16; Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS 8.1.16. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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