CVE-2020-1472: Microsoft Netlogon Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. Actively exploited: in CISA KEV since 2021-11-03. EPSS: 99.4% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when an attacker establishes a vulnerable Netlogon secure channel connection to a domain controller, using the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC). An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could run a specially crafted application on a device on the network. To exploit the vulnerability, an unauthenticated attacker would be required to use MS-NRPC to connect to a domain controller to obtain domain administrator access. Microsoft is addressing the vulnerability in a phased two-part rollout. These updates address the vulnerability by modifying how Netlogon handles the usage of Netlogon secure channels. For guidelines on how to manage the changes required for this vulnerability and more information on the phased rollout, see How to manage the changes in Netlogon secure channel connections associated with CVE-2020-1472 (updated September 28, 2020). When the second phase of Windows updates become available in Q1 2021, customers will be notified via a revision to this security vulnerability. If you wish to be notified when these updates are released, we recommend that you register for the security notifications mailer to be alerted of content changes to this advisory. See Microsoft Technical Security Notifications.

Affected products

  • Canonical Ubuntu Linux: version 14.04 only; version 16.04 only; version 18.04 only; version 20.04 only
  • Debian Debian Linux: version 9.0 only
  • Fedoraproject Fedora: version 31 only; version 32 only; version 33 only
  • Microsoft Windows Server 1903: any version
  • Microsoft Windows Server 1909: any version
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2004: affected versions not specified
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008: version r2 only
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012: affected versions not specified; version r2 only
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016: affected versions not specified
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019: affected versions not specified
  • Microsoft Windows Server 20h2: affected versions not specified
  • Opensuse Leap: version 15.1 only; version 15.2 only
  • Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance Kit: version 8.8 only
  • Samba Samba: before 4.10.18 (fixed in 4.10.18); from 4.11.0, before 4.11.13 (fixed in 4.11.13); from 4.12.0, before 4.12.7 (fixed in 4.12.7)
  • Synology Directory Server: before 4.4.5-0101 (fixed in 4.4.5-0101)

Published 2020-08-17. Last modified 2026-06-17.