CVE-2020-8254

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 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: 2020-10-28 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-23

Description

A vulnerability in the Pulse Secure Desktop Client < 9.1R9 has Remote Code Execution (RCE) if users can be convinced to connect to a malicious server. This vulnerability only affects Windows PDC.To improve the security of connections between Pulse clients and Pulse Connect Secure, see below recommendation(s):Disable Dynamic certificate trust for PDC.

Affected products

Pulse Secure Desktop Client: before 9.1; 9.1-r1, 9.1-r2, 9.1-r3, 9.1-r3.1, 9.1-r4, 9.1-r4.1 (+7) — fixed in 9.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Pulse Secure Desktop Client 9.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://kb.pulsesecure.net/articles/Pulse_Security_Advisories/SA44601
https://kb.pulsesecure.net/articles/Pulse_Security_Advisories/SA44601

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