CVE-2020-2018: Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS

Critical severity, CVSS 9.0. EPSS: 1.4% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

An authentication bypass vulnerability in the Panorama context switching feature allows an attacker with network access to a Panorama's management interface to gain privileged access to managed firewalls. An attacker requires some knowledge of managed firewalls to exploit this issue. This issue does not affect Panorama configured with custom certificates authentication for communication between Panorama and managed devices. This issue affects: PAN-OS 7.1 versions earlier than 7.1.26; PAN-OS 8.1 versions earlier than 8.1.12; 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 8.1.12 (fixed in 8.1.12); from 9.0.0, before 9.0.6 (fixed in 9.0.6)

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