CVE-2020-2016: Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS

High severity, CVSS 7.0. EPSS: 0.6% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A race condition due to insecure creation of a file in a temporary directory vulnerability in PAN-OS allows for root privilege escalation from a limited linux user account. This allows an attacker who has escaped the restricted shell as a low privilege administrator, possibly by exploiting another vulnerability, to escalate privileges to become root user. This issue affects: PAN-OS 7.1 versions earlier than 7.1.26; PAN-OS 8.1 versions earlier than 8.1.13; PAN-OS 9.0 versions earlier than 9.0.6; All versions of PAN-OS 8.0.

Affected products

• Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS: from 7.1.0, before 7.1.26 (fixed in 7.1.26); from 8.0.0, up to and including 8.0.20; from 8.1.0, before 8.1.13 (fixed in 8.1.13); from 9.0.0, before 9.0.6 (fixed in 9.0.6)

Published 2020-05-13. Last modified 2026-06-17.