CVE-2020-12641 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) OS Command Injection vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2023-06-22) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2023-06-22. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2023-07-13.
- 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-2020-12641.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-12641 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 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
rcube_image.php in Roundcube Webmail before 1.4.4 allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via shell metacharacters in a configuration setting for im_convert_path or im_identify_path.
Affected Products
backports sleopensuseleapopensusewebmailroundcubeResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Fix
Upgrade the affected component to the fixed release for CVE-2020-12641, or apply your distribution's backported patch — distro builds are often patched at an older version number, so check your vendor's advisory rather than the upstream version alone.
Workarounds
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
How to detect CVE-2020-12641
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2020-12641 -u https://target- Template
- Roundcube Webmail - Command Injection
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary commands on the server, potentially leading to a full compromise of the system.
- Remediation
- To remediate this vulnerability, update to Roundcube Webmail 1.4.5, 1.3.12 or later.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (domwhewell-sage), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-12641 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.