CVE-2020-12689 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in keystone. A fix is available for keystone — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenStack Keystone EC2 and/or credential endpoints are not protected from a scoped context
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
keystone🐍keystoneReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
An issue was discovered in OpenStack Keystone before 15.0.1, and 16.0.0. Any user authenticated within a limited scope (trust/oauth/application credential) can create an EC2 credential with an escalated permission, such as obtaining admin while the user is on a limited viewer role. This potentially allows a malicious user to act as the admin on a project another user has the admin role on, which can effectively grant that user global admin privileges.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | keystone | all versions | 15.0.1pip install --upgrade 'keystone==15.0.1' |
| 🐍PyPI | keystone | ≥ 16.0.0&&< 16.0.1 | 16.0.1pip install --upgrade 'keystone==16.0.1' |
Affected Products
ubuntu linuxcanonicalkeystoneopenstackDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for keystone, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update keystone to 15.0.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-12689 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Close the privilege gap rather than the entry point: audit which accounts, roles and service identities can reach the affected operation, drop the component to the least privilege it actually needs, and review file and directory permissions created by earlier installs — a default left in place is what makes this reachable.
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.
Red Hat Quay includes keystone-client, which is not vulnerable to this (server-side) vulnerability.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10.0 (Newton) | openstack-keystone-1:10.0.3-8.el7ost | RHSA-2020:3096 |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13.0 (Queens) | openstack-keystone-1:13.0.4-3.el7ost | RHSA-2020:2732 |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15.0 (Stein) | openstack-keystone-1:15.0.1-0.20200512110437.95b2bbe.el8ost | RHSA-2020:3102 |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16.0 (Train) | openstack-keystone-1:16.0.1-0.20200511063421.40cbb7b.el8ost | RHSA-2020:3105 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-12689 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.