What is CVE-2020-12620?

CVE-2020-12620 is a high-severity vulnerability in Pi-Hole, classified under OS Command Injection. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2020-07-30.

How severe is CVE-2020-12620?

High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.

RCE in Pi-Hole

CVE-2020-12620

Pi-hole 4.4 allows a user able to write to /etc/pihole/dns-servers.conf to escalate privileges through command injection (shell metacharacters after an IP address).

Vulnerability class: Command Injection (OS Command Injection)

Published 2020-07-30 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.015 (73.4th percentile), scored 2026-10-03.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 73rd percentile — 73.4% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.015 · newest: 0.015 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Pi-Hole

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-78 — OS Command Injection

References

github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole (Third Party Advisory)
pi-hole.net/ (Vendor Advisory)
0xpanic.github.io/2020/07/21/Pihole.html (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-12620?: CVE-2020-12620 is a high-severity vulnerability in Pi-Hole, classified under OS Command Injection. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2020-07-30.
How severe is CVE-2020-12620?: High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.