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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
HIGH severity

CVE-2020-8260

HIGH

CVE-2020-8260 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.2) Unrestricted File Upload vulnerability. 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.

A vulnerability in the Pulse Connect Secure < 9.1R9 admin web interface could allow an authenticated attacker to perform an arbitrary code execution using uncontrolled gzip extraction.

Published
Updated
Affected
1 product
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
3 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 22, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST.org (EPSS)

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.
  • 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-2020-8260.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
96.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Very High Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs100th percentile — riskier than 100% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
66.0%77.3%88.7%100.0%75.9%96.5%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2020-8260 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

A vulnerability in the Pulse Connect Secure < 9.1R9 admin web interface could allow an authenticated attacker to perform an arbitrary code execution using uncontrolled gzip extraction.

Affected Products

1 product · 16 configurations
Application
connect secureivanti
≤ 9.0
1 version
9.1
Exploits & PoCs
3

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

A vulnerability in the Pulse Connect Secure < 9.1R9 admin web interface …

github.comMetasploitApr 2021

A vulnerability in the Pulse Connect Secure < 9.1R9 admin web interface …

packetstormsecurity.comNVDSep 2021

A vulnerability in the Pulse Connect Secure < 9.1R9 admin web interface …

cisa.govCISAJul 2021

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vulnerability

  1. Detect

    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`).

  2. Remediation status

    No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2020-8260 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.

  3. Mitigate without a patch

    Treat uploaded files as untrusted until proven otherwise: validate the actual content type rather than the supplied extension, store uploads outside the web root on a volume mounted without execute permission, and rename them to server-generated identifiers so an attacker cannot choose the path a request will later resolve.

Frequently Asked Questions

A vulnerability in the Pulse Connect Secure < 9.1R9 admin web interface could allow an authenticated attacker to perform an arbitrary code execution using uncontrolled gzip extraction.
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CVE-2020-8260: Unrestricted File Upload (High 7.2, KEV)