CVE-2022-44020 — sushy-tools
MEDIUMCVE-2022-44020 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.5) CWE-281 vulnerability in sushy-tools. A fix is available for sushy-tools — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenStack Sushy-Tools and VirtualBMC Improper Preservation of Permissions
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-44020.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-44020 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
sushy-tools🐍virtualbmcReal-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 Sushy-Tools through 0.21.0 and VirtualBMC through 2.2.2. Changing the boot device configuration with these packages removes password protection from the managed libvirt XML domain. NOTE: this only affects an "unsupported, production-like configuration."
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | sushy-tools | all versions | 0.21.1pip install --upgrade 'sushy-tools==0.21.1' |
| 🐍PyPI | virtualbmc | all versions | 3.0.0pip install --upgrade 'virtualbmc==3.0.0' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for sushy-tools, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update sushy-tools to 0.21.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-44020 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-44020 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-44020. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13.0 - ELS | python-virtualbmc-0:1.2.0-2.el7ost | RHSA-2022:8896 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-44020 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-44020 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.