Improper Authentication in Salt - CVE-2020-11651

Detailed vulnerability description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to bypass authentication process.

The vulnerability exists due to the salt-master process "ClearFuncs" class does not properly validate method calls. A remote non-authenticated attacker can bypass authentication process and gain access some methods without authentication. These methods can be used to retrieve user tokens from the salt master and/or run arbitrary commands on salt minion as root.

Note: this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.

How to mitigate CVE-2020-11651

Sources

• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-04/msg00047.html
• https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/releases/2019.2.4.html
• https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/v3000.2_docs/doc/topics/releases/3000.2.rst
• https://labs.f-secure.com/advisories/saltstack-authorization-bypass