# CVE-2020-15592: Path traversal in n/a

> A path traversal vulnerability in SteelCentral Aternity Agent allows attackers to load arbitrary plugins via IPC, leading to privilege escalation and code execution.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 27 Jul 2020
- **Updated:** 4 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-wvfg-7crv-xg2v

## What is CVE-2020-15592?

CVE-2020-15592 is a high-severity path traversal vulnerability in n/a, published on 27 Jul 2020. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

SteelCentral Aternity Agent before 11.0.0.120 on Windows allows Privilege Escalation via a crafted file. It uses an executable running as a high privileged Windows service to perform administrative tasks and collect data from other processes. It distributes functionality among different processes and uses IPC (Inter-Process Communication) primitives to enable the processes to cooperate. The remotely callable methods from remotable objects available through interprocess communication allow loading of arbitrary plugins (i.e., C# assemblies) from the "%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%/Aternity Information Systems/Assistant/plugins” directory, where the name of the plugin is passed as part of an XML-serialized object. However, because the name of the DLL is concatenated with the “.\plugins” string, a directory traversal vulnerability exists in the way plugins are resolved.

Weakness: CWE-22 (Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-15592?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Riverbed Steelcentral Aternity Agent.

## How do I fix CVE-2020-15592?

No fix has been published for CVE-2020-15592 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2020-15592 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-15592 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in n/a

- [CVE-2020-15593](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-15593/): Deserialization in n/a (high 7.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2020-15592 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2020-15592 is a high-severity path traversal vulnerability in n/a, published on 27 Jul 2020. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-15592 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: n/a. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-15592/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-15592/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-15592
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-15592
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2020-15592

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-15592/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.