What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-5253: Privilege escalation in NetHack

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-03-10 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-184

Description

NetHack before version 3.6.0 allowed malicious use of escaping of characters in the configuration file (usually .nethackrc) which could be exploited. This bug is patched in NetHack 3.6.0.

Affected products

• NetHack: before 3.6.0 — fixed in 3.6.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: NetHack 3.6.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/commits/612755bfb5c412079795c68ba392df5d93874ed8
• https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/security/advisories/GHSA-2c7p-3fj4-223m
• https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/commits/612755bfb5c412079795c68ba392df5d93874ed8
• https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/security/advisories/GHSA-2c7p-3fj4-223m

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