What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-20240: Denial of Service through coldToFrozen.sh Script in Splunk Enterprise

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-05-20 · updated 2026-07-23
• Weakness: CWE-20

Description

In Splunk Enterprise versions below 10.2.2, 10.0.5, 9.4.11, and 9.3.12, and Splunk Cloud Platform versions below 10.4.2603.1, 10.3.2512.9, 10.2.2510.11, 10.1.2507.21, 10.0.2503.13, and 9.3.2411.129, a low-privileged user that does not hold the ‘admin’ or ‘power’ Splunk roles could cause a Denial of Service by exploiting the `coldToFrozen.sh` script in the `splunk_archiver` app to rename critical Splunk directories, making the instance non-functional.<br><br>The Denial of Service is possible because of missing input validation in the `coldToFrozen.sh` script, which accepts arbitrary file paths and renames them without restricting operations to safe directories.

Affected products

• Splunk Enterprise: from 9.3.0 before 9.3.12; from 9.4.0 before 9.4.11; from 10.0.0 before 10.0.5; from 10.2.0 before 10.2.2 — fixed in 10.0.5, 10.2.2, 9.3.12, 9.4.11
• Splunk Cloud Platform: from 9.3.2411 before 9.3.2411.129; from 10.0.2503 before 10.0.2503.13; from 10.1.2507 before 10.1.2507.21; from 10.2.2510 before 10.2.2510.11; from 10.3.2512 before 10.3.2512.9; 10.4.2603 — fixed in 10.0.2503.13, 10.1.2507.21, 10.2.2510.11, 10.3.2512.9, 9.3.2411.129

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Splunk Enterprise 10.0.5, 10.2.2, 9.3.12, 9.4.11; Splunk Cloud Platform 10.0.2503.13, 10.1.2507.21, 10.2.2510.11, 10.3.2512.9. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://advisory.splunk.com/advisories/SVD-2026-0504

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