CVE-2020-36164: Veritas Enterprise Vault

High severity, CVSS 8.8. EPSS: 0.5% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

An issue was discovered in Veritas Enterprise Vault through 14.0. On start-up, it loads the OpenSSL library. The OpenSSL library then attempts to load the openssl.cnf configuration file (which does not exist) at the following locations in both the System drive (typically C:\) and the product's installation drive (typically not C:\): \Isode\etc\ssl\openssl.cnf (on SMTP Server) or \user\ssl\openssl.cnf (on other affected components). By default, on Windows systems, users can create directories under C:\. A low privileged user can create a openssl.cnf configuration file to load a malicious OpenSSL engine, resulting in arbitrary code execution as SYSTEM when the service starts. This gives the attacker administrator access on the system, allowing the attacker (by default) to access all data, access all installed applications, etc. This vulnerability only affects a server with MTP Server, SMTP Archiving IMAP Server, IMAP Archiving, Vault Cloud Adapter, NetApp File server, or File System Archiving for NetApp as File Server.

Affected products

• Veritas Enterprise Vault: up to and including 14.0

Published 2021-01-06. Last modified 2026-06-17.