CVE-2020-10189 — Manageengine Desktop Central
CRITICALCVE-2020-10189 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in zohocorp manageengine desktop central. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Zoho ManageEngine Desktop Central before 10.0.474 allows remote code execution because of deserialization of untrusted data in getChartImage in the FileStorage class. This is related…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-05-03.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2020-10189.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-10189 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
Zoho ManageEngine Desktop Central before 10.0.474 allows remote code execution because of deserialization of untrusted data in getChartImage in the FileStorage class. This is related to the CewolfServlet and MDMLogUploaderServlet servlets.
Affected Products
manageengine desktop centralzohocorpResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
ManageEngine Desktop Central - Java Deserialization (Metasploit)
by Metasploit · Mar 17, 2020
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every zohocorp manageengine desktop central deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Fix
Apply the zohocorp manageengine desktop central security patch or hotfix for CVE-2020-10189 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.
Workarounds
Do not deserialise data from untrusted sources: where the format allows it, restrict deserialisation to an explicit allowlist of expected types, and prefer a data-only format (JSON, Protobuf) over one that can reconstruct arbitrary objects until you can upgrade. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
How to detect CVE-2020-10189
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2020-10189 -u https://target- Template
- ManageEngine Desktop Central Java Deserialization
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- Unauthenticated attackers can execute arbitrary code on Zoho ManageEngine Desktop Central servers, leading to complete system compromise and access to all managed endpoints.
- Remediation
- Upgrade to ManageEngine Desktop Central Build 10.0.474 or later.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (king-alexander), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-10189 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.