CVE-2020-4427 — Data Risk Manager
CRITICALCVE-2020-4427 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Improper Authentication vulnerability in ibm data risk manager. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
IBM Data Risk Manager 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 2.0.4, 2.0.5, and 2.0.6 could allow a remote attacker to bypass security restrictions when configured with SAML authentication. By sending…
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-2020-4427.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-4427 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
IBM Data Risk Manager 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 2.0.4, 2.0.5, and 2.0.6 could allow a remote attacker to bypass security restrictions when configured with SAML authentication. By sending a specially crafted HTTP request, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to bypass the authentication process and gain full administrative access to the system. IBM X-Force ID: 180532.
Affected Products
data risk manageribmResearch 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
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every ibm data risk manager deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2020-4427 yet — track the ibm data risk manager advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
How to detect CVE-2020-4427
A community-maintained Nuclei template exists for this CVE. You can scan for it directly:
nuclei -id cve-2020-4427 -u https://target- Template
- IBM Data Risk Manager - Authentication Bypass via SAML
- Severity
- critical
- Impact
- Unauthenticated attackers can bypass authentication via SAML endpoint and gain full administrative access to IBM Data Risk Manager, compromising all managed data risk information.
- Remediation
- Apply the latest security updates and patches provided by Cisco for HyperFlex HX.
Template by ProjectDiscovery nuclei-templates (ritikchaddha), MIT licensed. View the full template. Scan only systems you are authorised to test.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-4427 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.