What is CVE-2020-24046?

CVE-2020-24046 is a high-severity vulnerability in Titanhq Spamtitan, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 7.2/10. Published 2020-09-17.

How severe is CVE-2020-24046?

High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.2 out of 10.

Privilege escalation in Titanhq Spamtitan

CVE-2020-24046

A sandbox escape issue was discovered in TitanHQ SpamTitan Gateway 7.07. It limits the admin user to a restricted shell, allowing execution of a small number of tools of the operating system. This restricted shell can be bypassed after changing the properties of the user admin in the operating system file /etc/passwd. This file cannot be accessed though the restricted shell, but it can be modified by abusing the Backup/Import Backup functionality of the web interface. An authenticated attacker would be able to obtain the file /var/tmp/admin.passwd after executing a Backup operation. This file can be manually modified to change the GUID of the user to 0 (root) and change the restricted shell to a normal shell /bin/sh. After the modification is done, the file can be recompressed to a .tar.bz file and imported again via the Import Backup functionality. The properties of the admin user will be overwritten and a root shell will be granted to the user upon the next successful login.

Vulnerability class: Privilege Escalation

Published 2020-09-17 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.2 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.034 (88.4th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 88th percentile — 88.4% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.034 · newest: 0.034 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Titanhq Spamtitan — versions 7.07

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-269 — Improper Privilege Management

References

github.com/felmoltor (Third Party Advisory)
twitter.com/felmoltor (Third Party Advisory)
www.titanhq.com (Vendor Advisory)
sensepost.com/blog/2020/clash-of-the-spamtitan/ (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-24046?: CVE-2020-24046 is a high-severity vulnerability in Titanhq Spamtitan, classified under Improper Privilege Management. CVSS score: 7.2/10. Published 2020-09-17.
How severe is CVE-2020-24046?: High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.2 out of 10.