- 9.0CriticalCVSS base score
- 1.4%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 28% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
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.
Timeline
ID reserved
By palo_alto
- 5 months later
· 5 months later
Published
- 4 years later
· 4 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| palo_altoCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | Critical9.0 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | Critical9.0 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 1.4% · top 28% of all CVEs (9 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Critical 9.0.
Affected products
- affected 8.0.*
- affected 7.1 – < 7.1.26
- affected 8.1 – < 8.1.12
- affected 9.0 – < 9.0.6
What to do
Solution: This issue is fixed in PAN-OS 7.1.26, PAN-OS 8.1.12, PAN-OS 9.0.6, and all later PAN-OS versions. Upgrading Panorama to a fixed version is sufficient to resolve the issue. PAN-OS 8.0 is now end-of-life as of October 31, 2019, and is no longer covered by our Product Security Assurance policies.
Workaround: This issue can be completely mitigated by enabling custom certificates authentication between Panorama and managed firewalls. See https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/panorama/8-0/panorama-admin/set-up-panorama/set-up-authentication-using-custom-certificates.html This issue affects the management interface of PAN-OS and is strongly mitigated by following best practices for securing the PAN-OS management interface. Please review the Best Practices for Securing Administrative Access in the PAN-OS technical documentation, available at: https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com
References
1
- https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2020-2018 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2020-22046 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2020-2018)Record last updated .