CVE-2020-7221: MariaDB

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 0.7% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

mysql_install_db in MariaDB 10.4.7 through 10.4.11 allows privilege escalation from the mysql user account to root because chown and chmod are performed unsafely, as demonstrated by a symlink attack on a chmod 04755 of auth_pam_tool_dir/auth_pam_tool. NOTE: this does not affect the Oracle MySQL product, which implements mysql_install_db differently.

Affected products

• MariaDB MariaDB: from 10.4.7, up to and including 10.4.11

Published 2020-02-04. Last modified 2026-06-17.