CVE-2020-5208: remote code execution vulnerability in ipmitool

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-02-05 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-120

Description

It's been found that multiple functions in ipmitool before 1.8.19 neglect proper checking of the data received from a remote LAN party, which may lead to buffer overflows and potentially to remote code execution on the ipmitool side. This is especially dangerous if ipmitool is run as a privileged user. This problem is fixed in version 1.8.19.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 8.0, 9.0
Fedoraproject Fedora: 30, 31
Ipmitool Project Ipmitool: 1.8.18
openSUSE Leap: 15.1

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-02/msg00031.html
https://github.com/ipmitool/ipmitool/commit/e824c23316ae50beb7f7488f2055ac65e8b341f2
https://github.com/ipmitool/ipmitool/security/advisories/GHSA-g659-9qxw-p7cp
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/02/msg00006.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/06/msg00029.html
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/K2BPW66KDP4H36AGZXLED57A3O2Y6EQW/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/RYYEKUAUTCWICM77HOEGZDVVEUJLP4BP/
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202101-03
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-02/msg00031.html
https://github.com/ipmitool/ipmitool/commit/e824c23316ae50beb7f7488f2055ac65e8b341f2
https://github.com/ipmitool/ipmitool/security/advisories/GHSA-g659-9qxw-p7cp
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/02/msg00006.html

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