CVE-2020-5425: User Impersonation possible in Tanzu SSO

Severity: high (CVSS 7.9 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-10-31 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-287

Description

Single Sign-On for Vmware Tanzu all versions prior to 1.11.3 ,1.12.x versions prior to 1.12.4 and 1.13.x prior to 1.13.1 are vulnerable to user impersonation attack.If two users are logged in to the SSO operator dashboard at the same time, with the same username, from two different identity providers, one can acquire the token of the other and thus operate with their permissions. Note: Foundation may be vulnerable only if: 1) The system zone is set up to use a SAML identity provider 2) There are internal users that have the same username as users in the external SAML provider 3) Those duplicate-named users have the scope to access the SSO operator dashboard 4) The vulnerability doesn't appear with LDAP because of chained authentication.

Affected products

VMware Tanzu Single Sign-On for VMware Tanzu: before 1.11.3; from 1.12.0 before 1.12.4; from 1.13.0 before 1.13.1 — fixed in 1.11.3, 1.12.4, 1.13.1
VMware Tanzu Single Sign-On for VMware Tanzu: from 1.11 before 1.11.3; from 1.12 before 1.12.4; from 1.13 before 1.13.1 — fixed in 1.11.3, 1.12.4, 1.13.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: VMware Tanzu Single Sign-On for VMware Tanzu 1.11.3, 1.12.4, 1.13.1; VMware Tanzu Single Sign-On for VMware Tanzu 1.11.3, 1.12.4, 1.13.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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