CVE-2020-8468 — Apex One
HIGHCVE-2020-8468 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) CWE-74 vulnerability in trendmicro apex one. 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.
Trend Micro Apex One (2019), OfficeScan XG and Worry-Free Business Security (9.0, 9.5, 10.0) agents are affected by a content validation escape vulnerability which could allow an attacker…
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-2020-8468.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-8468 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
Trend Micro Apex One (2019), OfficeScan XG and Worry-Free Business Security (9.0, 9.5, 10.0) agents are affected by a content validation escape vulnerability which could allow an attacker to manipulate certain agent client components. An attempted attack requires user authentication.
Affected Products
apex onetrendmicroofficescantrendmicroworry-free business securitytrendmicroResearch 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 trendmicro apex one deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2020-8468 yet — track the trendmicro apex one advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-8468 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.