CVE-2020-37165 AbsoluteTelnet 11.12 - "license name" Denial of Service

Medium 6.7 Published 6 Feb 2026 Updated 1 Oct 2026

Local attackers can crash AbsoluteTelnet by pasting an oversized license name, causing a denial of service.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: A user has to click or open something
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2020-37165?

CVE-2020-37165 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Celestial Software AbsoluteTelnet, published on 6 Feb 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

AbsoluteTelnet 11.12 contains a denial of service vulnerability that allows local attackers to crash the application by supplying an oversized license name. Attackers can generate a 2500-character payload and paste it into the license name field to trigger an application crash.

Weakness: CWE-120

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-37165?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Celestialsoftware Absolutetelnet.

How do I fix CVE-2020-37165?

No fix has been published for CVE-2020-37165 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2020-37165 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2020-37165 exists.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-7g58-8gc4-vxgv.